


journey to the past

by wastrelwoods



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Anastasia (1997 & Broadway) Fusion, Brahma - Freeform, Canon-Typical Violence, Casual Sex Done Absolutely Wrong Because Everyone Involved Is Pining Too Much, Memory Loss, Other, Rimming, Trans Peter Nureyev, ah...childhood trauma, give peter nureyev a home 2k20, i mean its a whole fic about identity what am i gonna do? make him CIS?, knife cat juno, nureyev king of emotional repression
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:13:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25051477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastrelwoods/pseuds/wastrelwoods
Summary: Prince Peter Nureyev III disappeared twenty years ago, in the coup that brought down the old Brahma. A nameless thief has spent his life searching the galaxy for the home he can't remember. Buddy Aurinko and her family of thieves take on the con of the century, with a royal twist.
Relationships: Mag & Peter Nureyev, Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 79
Kudos: 108





	1. the city in the clouds

**Author's Note:**

> had the impulse to write this in like....2017 but the time was simply not right. now that there's a perfectly good found family of cons and thieves around to get involved, though? anastasia au time lets talk about MYSTERIOUS ORPHAN WITH A ROYALTY MOTIF PETER NUREYEV
> 
> rating will _probably_ jump to explicit later and i will also put specific content warnings in chapter notes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THEN: A revolutionary takes on an unlikely apprentice. 
> 
> NOW: A thief without a name strikes a deal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: canon-typical threats of violence, explosions, references to radiation poisoning

Mag can see the hooded figure watching him from across the plaza. 

He whistles as he drags his pocketknife over the block of wood in his hand, carving aimlessly with no real vision in mind. He picked up the habit as a good way to pass the time, out of place among the bluebloods of the flying city but not out-and-out suspicious enough to cause trouble. There’s the rough outline of a face, an arm, a big blocky wing starting to emerge from the wood. Might be an angel, one day. 

He glances back toward the hooded figure out of the corner of his eye, and sees the shape has disappeared. Mag chuckles to himself. “Good lad,” he mumbles, under his breath. 

He counts down from ten, eyes back on his whittling but attention focused elsewhere, marking every little change on the air and tracing the route he would have taken in his head. Behind the fountain, under the bench and then past the statue of Chancellor Rossignol, avoiding the camera mounted on its base. Then again, the boy’s so small, he could probably manage to stay hidden under the fountain almost the whole way around--

The countdown reaches zero at the same moment he feels a set of spindly arms close around his waist. “Gotcha!” 

Mag throws his hands up. “Woah, slow down,” he says, unable to mask the laugh in his voice. “First rule of thieving, Highness, don’t jump on a man with a knife in his hand unless you plan to make sure he can’t use it first.” 

The arms release him with a groan. “You’re no fun, Mag.” But it’s plain from the excitement in his bright eyes the princeling doesn’t begrudge him, not truly. “What’s the lesson tonight? I’ve been practicing my forgery, too, just like you showed me, I think I’ve got Count Orsinov’s signature down pat, look--”

The teaching’s another habit he picked up without really meaning to. Tutor’s position was open and he had a bit of luck with the background check that got him in with a lot fewer questions asked than there probably should have been. The royal types are getting overconfident, with their death machine keeping every nose to the grindstone down below. Let a real revolutionary slip right past their defenses, straight into the heart of the floating city. 

He’s got a lot of time on his hands, with this con, to wander around New Kinshasa and figure out just what its weak points are. Didn’t really expect to stumble headfirst into a weak point of his own, too. 

The Nureyev kid’s too charming, is the trouble, even with the silver spoon in his mouth. Smart as a whip, too, devouring all the approved textbooks so quick Mag couldn’t help but start to supplement his education a little. And he looks at Mag like he hung the moon, and Mag wasn’t expecting that either. 

It would be a hell of a lot easier to think about what he’s here to do, if the kid didn’t look at him like that. 

“Mag?” His young face is solemn and curious, and his brows are drawn together in worry. “Is something wrong?” 

Mag forces a laugh, and claps him on the shoulder. “Not at all,” he blusters. “What, a tutor can’t get a little lost in his own head, trying to plan a lesson for his favorite pupil?” 

Peter Nureyev crosses his arms, and tilts his chin up the pompous way that only a kid who’s been wearing his own crown for portraits since he was ten can manage. “I’m your only pupil, Mag.” 

“Who says you can’t be my favorite, too?” he crows, teasing, and ruffles his dark hair. “Nonsense, Your Highness.” 

That wins him a smile, small and sharp-toothed and shining with pride. Makes Mag think about the way he’s started to consider re-evaluating his approach. The kid makes a good thief, for a spoilt royal. He and Mag make a good team. Could be an oddball little family, if things were different. 

But isn’t that why he’s here, after all? To change things? To make a new world, for himself and for the rest of Brahma? 

Mag runs his thumb over the rough grain of the wood he’s carving, and sighs. “Thought we’d talk about something different tonight, Pete.” Mag doesn’t drop the formality of the royal title often, but he’s taking a risk, here. 

Eyes wide, expression attentive and earnest, the kid leans closer.

Mag clears his throat. “Did I ever tell you about the Guardian Angel System?”

*

The sun is setting. Unshielded by the dome, the sunsets are robins-egg blue, and the radiation burns strong enough to induce moderate hallucinations in onlookers within a day, or so the rumor goes. 

Peter doesn’t intend to stay long enough to find out, either way. 

It’s difficult to say whether the Cerberus Province is beautiful. It has a skyline unlike nearly any other, that’s certain. Most of the ramshackle city is half-buried under the sand, high crater walls rising around the decaying architecture and casting it in deep shadow. And at the center of it all, the old lighthouse rising up into the irradiated sky to mark the way for those who are unfortunate enough to have business here. 

If there were another way to get what he needed, he would never have set foot in this cove. Mars has already proven itself a lost cause the same way as every planet before it. Everything new, and nothing familiar. Nothing to provide him any real answers, or to soothe for a minute the restless hunger that has driven him from one skyline to the next for as long as he has known. 

If he can’t manage to navigate a way off-planet, he is keenly aware that this will be the last skyline he ever sees. 

Peter pulls his cloak tighter around himself, and leans back so the shadows fall across his sunburnt face, and finishes his tea. He glances across the street, through the shifting shapes of the crowd, and catches a glimpse of a familiar silhouette leaning against a dumpster at the corner of the alleyway. Broad shoulders. Long braid streaked with grey. Brown leather jacket. 

Sand burns at the back of his throat, grainy and hot. The Jovian tea did very little to wash the sensation away, and considerably more to empty the last creds from his pockets. He watches as long as he can without blinking, but when he does shut his eyes the man slips out of focus again. Ducked around the corner and out of sight, most likely. But Peter wonders if the lurking shadow is less corporeal than that. Perhaps he’s been out in the sun too long already. 

He’s putting the evening’s business off, wasting time, but Peter supposes a man ought to be permitted to linger as long as he possibly can before he indentures himself. 

Peter pulls the hood of the cloak over his head, and braces himself to maneuver through the clamoring traffic of the street. An unmasked face in the Cerberus Province draws more attention than a covered one. And there is always the chance, however infinitesimally slight, that someone will know his face better than he does. A possibility he can never completely discount. 

He keeps one hand resting loosely on the handle of a knife as he makes his way through the crowd. Slips the other into a purse and out again with scarcely a thought when another body brushes too close. 

People plead and bargain and banter in languages he knows by experience and several he doesn’t recognize, mixed in with rough, unsteady Solar. The men who greet him in the lobby of the bureau are from Balder. Peter recalls enough to make a faltering attempt at conversation, which points him in the direction of the waiting room. 

Most wait until their skin starts to blister and crack under the poison sun to come to the Board of Fresh Starts, and when they come they come in search of relief at any price. But to maintain that business model, they need other positions. Contractors as well as employees. Field workers. Specialists of one kind or another. Peter knows how to navigate the system. He’ll take out the loan he needs to forge a ticket off-planet, let them hook him up to a tag or a tracker or some equally invasive security measure until he returns with a batch of Curemother plus interest to seal the deal. And then, just like that, no more Mars. 

A woman greets Peter at the reception desk with a raised eyebrow and a suspicious glance. “You are looking in the wrong place,” she says, dryly, in slightly rusty Solar. “Sick people come here, not healthy ones.” 

“I have a meeting,” he explains. “With Mr. Rasbach.” 

She purses her lips, and types a few commands into her computer. “Not with Rasbach,” she dismisses. “He is not working here now.” 

Peter frowns. “With his replacement, then.” 

The receptionist clicks her tongue, and sighs. “You will wait here,” she decides, after a moment. “I will ask. Ten minutes.” 

Ten minutes. Peter perches on one of the uncomfortable chairs, and worries at a hangnail. The last of the blue sunset is fading, giving way to the sickly neon of the Cerberus night. The night air kills a little more slowly here, he’s heard. 

He hadn’t expected Rasbach to disappear on him. Hadn’t accounted for it in time to prepare a backup plan. There are precious few people in this cove not champing at the bit to make a deal of one kind or another, and that is both advantageous and risky if this opportunity should prove fruitless. He needs the money. It’s a toss-up what he might sacrifice to get it, when push comes to shove.

A flash of movement out of the corner of his eye catches his attention, and Peter cranes to peer through the window again. There, under an overhanging sign, a broad-shouldered man taking off a visored helmet. A long braid falls down his back. He’s wearing a brown jacket. 

That’s one too many coincidences for his comfort. Peter jumps to his feet almost reflexively, nervous fingers wrapping around his concealed knife. The occupants of the waiting room who are responsive enough to pay him any mind shuffle and shoot him strange looks.

At the same moment, something in the next room explodes. 

Peter lurches as the rumble shakes the floor, and braces himself against the back of the cheap plastic chair, smelling acrid, chemical smoke. A few of the other patrons offer shouts of surprise or fear, but some only turn tail and run without a word. When things break bad in a place like the Cerberus Province, it’s best practice to find somewhere else to be. 

The lights flicker, and then go dark. Peter grits his teeth, and presses himself into an alcove at the corner of the room, out of sight and out of mind. In the hazy dark, he can barely make out the shape of a hooded figure darting across his vision and through the doors to the back rooms of the clinic. 

He looks back toward the lobby and the exit, and sees the man in the brown jacket silhouetted in the narrow hallway. He takes a breath, lets it out, and follows the other figure deeper into the building instead, hoping to escape his notice. 

The receptionist’s plasma monitor at her desk is whirring loudly, the screen busily running lines of code and opening files seemingly of its own volition, apparently being accessed remotely. The chemical smell is stronger. Peter pulls his scarf up to cover his mouth and nose, and darts down the hallway, glancing into each room as he passes. There are bodies in more than one, dead or unconscious or playing at it to stay out of trouble. 

Not for the first time, he bemoans the way every permanent structure in the province is built up from a makeshift bunker. Few doors, and fewer windows. Peter shifts his grip on the knife in his hand, ready to pry up the bolts on a vent and start crawling. He’s escaped from tighter spots. 

The emergency power kicks in, and the lights flicker again, sputtering to life with a low buzz. Emergency lights, in a harsh, subterranean red. 

_Red._

Peter registers, distantly, that he’s stopped breathing. 

It’s difficult to say what the trouble is, why his heartbeat thunders so dramatically against his ribs at the sight of the red light on the bunker walls. His head spins and he can feel sweat pour down his face, under the mask. There’s no memory attached to the catalogue of sensations, only a blank void, and a surge of completely irrational dread. His hand is shaking too hard to keep a steady grip on the knife. Peter pockets it, and shuts his eyes. Later, he thinks, firmly. Fold it up. File it away.

There are more footsteps echoing down the empty hall. “Vespa!” someone speaks in the darkness, halfway between a stage whisper and a shout. “We have what we came for, okay? That’s enough.” 

Peter ducks behind a desk in time to see the slight hooded figure from before materialize out of the thinning haze. Vaguely bloodshot eyes scan over the room and fix on the newcomer before narrowing. “Wanna announce that a little louder, Steel?” she says, raspy and cold. “There might be a few people in Olympus Mons who didn’t hear you the first time.” 

The newcomer lets out a frustrated huff. “Goddamnit, don’t sneak up on me like that.” 

“I’ll sneak up on whoever I want to!” The woman shrugs off her hood. Her hair is dyed green and chopped in an uneven bob that flatters her sharp face and sharp eyes. There’s a crescent moon etched in black ink on the side of her throat. She tilts her head to one side, curious and wary in equal measures. “What are you doing back here, anyway?” 

Peter leans out far enough to catch a glimpse of the other stranger in profile, but he can’t make out much. A long leather duster with a high collar. The subtle glint of an earring. “Big Guy wanted my help clearing the building.” 

The woman snorts. “Yeah, well, he’s not getting any from me.” She brushes past the other a little roughly, leaving him to hover awkwardly in the doorway. But just as Peter expects him to sigh and turn away, he freezes.

Peter glances past him and spots his own shadowy reflection in the warped metal of the far wall a moment too late. “Hey--” the stranger calls out. 

Peter rolls away behind the desk, waits for the stranger to dart forward and then makes a break for it. He only gets a few steps, though, before a hand catches at the trailing edge of his scarf and pulls him up short. Peter throws back his hood to shrug off the offending garment, but the stranger is close enough to grab for his forearm, next, and he deflects, flinching away and slipping the knife out of his sleeve again, willing the lingering tremor in his fingers not to betray him. He lashes out, but the stranger is quick too, and Peter sees a single dark eye go wide before he ducks, tugs on the scarf, and swings one booted foot out in an arc that sweeps Peter’s feet out from underneath him. 

He’s unbalanced, toppling so quickly it’s all he can do to take the stranger down with him, kicking out so one knee catches him under the ribs. He rolls over one shoulder and redirects the momentum of the fall to pin the stranger underneath him. 

The edge of the knife tucks smoothly under his chin, and for the first time Peter gets a clear look at his face: striking, in a rugged sort of way. There’s a jagged scar running across the bridge of his nose and one eye covered with a plain leather patch. A few days dark stubble on his cheeks and a slightly wry expression, like he’s more embarrassed than anything else to have ended up sprawled on his back with a blade to his throat. 

Peter pushes just a little further, to see what he’ll do, tilting his chin up by pressing the flat of the blade in closer. His throat bobs, and he grins. “Hey.”

“What do you want?” Peter snaps, not feeling particularly generous under the circumstances. 

The stranger sighs in mock-annoyance. “Really, no introductions? No ‘Nice weather we’re having, sorry my weird lurking interrupted your big heist, that lipstain looks great on you, by the way, what’s your name?’ ‘Oh, I’m Juno Steel, and _you are--_ ’”

“Lovely to meet you,” Peter answers him, impatient. “But I’m afraid I’m in a bit of a rush this evening. Are you going to try to stop me leaving again?” 

Juno Steel raises an eyebrow. “Are you gonna try to kill me?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Peter lies, because he knows the fact that he hasn’t done it already makes the truth patently obvious. 

“Well, that’s further than I get with a lot of people,” he says, blithely, while looking Peter over in a discerning way that puts him more than a little on edge. “You...don’t have a debtor’s tag.” 

Peter presses his lips together. “I don’t see why that’s any of your concern.” 

“Just trying to figure out if you seem more like a disgruntled employee or a disgruntled customer,” Juno says, half to himself. “But hey, either way, if you’re in the market for a job, I know a lady--”

The knife withdraws from his throat, and Peter pockets it with a sigh. This is a waste of time. “You couldn’t afford me,” he assures the man pinned underneath him. 

Juno throws his head back and laughs, a sudden bright peal. “Wasn’t talking about myself, actually,” he clarifies, and props himself up on his elbows, looking insufferably pleased with himself. “Ever heard the name Buddy Aurinko?” 

Peter has, for a moment, the distinct sensation of the floor tilting underneath him. He fights another moment to compose himself, and then stands, offering Juno a hand up. “In that case,” he says, magnanimously, to cover the quiver of excitement in his voice, “I suppose I can clear my schedule after all. Where do I submit my application?” 

It takes a moment too long for Juno to let go of his hand. “You should, uh, come with me now before that second firestarter Vespa planted goes off. She _really_ wanted to burn this place to the ground and I was outnumbered when I tried to point out arson is illegal.” 

Peter falters mid-step. “You work for one of the best-known criminals in the galaxy.” 

Juno shrugs, noncommittal. “Yeah, it’s new.” 

He turns back toward the abandoned lobby and gestures over one shoulder for Peter to follow. Peter, for his sins, falls in line.


	2. carte blanche

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juno brings his new recruit home to meet the family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: none specific to this chapter!

Jet is lingering at the corner of the bar past closing time, keeping a lookout, and if he’s happy to see Juno, he does a really bad job of showing it. He’s got what looks like an old watch broken down into its tiny component parts all across the counter, frowning down at a tiny spring in his big, callused hand, barely sparing a glance to turn that frown on Juno himself. When Juno’s newly acquired shadow slips in beside him, though, his face goes downright stormy. 

Juno offers him a little wave. 

“You are late,” Jet announces, which seems like an unfair judgement, because time is relative and it’s not like the rest of them took off for deep space while he was gone. Lighthouse is still lit and everything. 

“Made a friend,” Juno explains, gesturing to the man lurking over his shoulder, who’s drinking in everything with a hungry intensity that Juno wants to believe springs from regular old curiosity and not because he’s jumpy enough to pull out the switchblade again and start swinging. “This is, uh.…” he hesitates. “Actually, you know what? I never got a name.” 

Juno’s shadow brushes past him, suddenly much more composed, and offers the Big Guy a handshake and a toothy grin. “Rex Glass,” he says, smooth as silk wrapped around a knife. 

Pretty instantaneous shift in his demeanor. Juno doesn’t know what to think about that, whether he trusts it or not. He’s going with his gut, here, and his gut says if that’s a lie it’s not a totally dangerous one. And, just maybe, he wouldn’t mind seeing a little more of that sharp smile around the ship if he’s really committing to this whole life of crime career-change. 

Big Guy doesn’t know what to think either, or doesn’t think much of him, because when he shakes Rex’s hand he stares him down without blinking and rumbles, “I am Jet Sikuliaq.” Juno tries hard not to be offended by it. 

The smile fixed to Rex’ face wavers. “Ah,” he says, faintly. “Of course. Juno, any other living legends I ought to be made aware of, or do you plan to keep springing them on me like this?” 

“My, uh, old secretary is here too?” 

Jet sets down the half-assembled watch. “You intend to introduce this man to the rest of the crew?” 

Juno shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his coat, and braces himself. “Buddy said she wanted another person on the team,” he says, defensive. 

“Another professional, yes,” Jet clarifies. “I do not believe your friend is very likely to possess the proper qualifications.” 

In retrospect _friend_ was an interesting word to apply to a guy who pinned him to the ground and damn near slit his throat, but call him an idiot, Juno’s invested. Wouldn’t be the only person on the crew to introduce themself to Juno via the business end of a knife. Maybe Rex and Vespa would get along, if Vespa is the kind of person who gets along with anybody. Juno doesn’t know. 

It’s a weak argument, and he knows it, so he leaves it alone. Rex can speak for himself. 

And he does, inclining his head in a little nod. “Of course,” he admits, “We can’t all have a reputation like yours to recommend us. The Unnatural Disaster--”

“That is not a subject I wish to discuss with you,” Jet interrupts, louder and harsher than Juno has ever heard him, and he definitely remembers the Big Guy threatening to turn him into jelly at least once the first time he’d come to the Cerberus Province. Rex looks cowed, and just as unnerved as Juno feels. But at least Juno is working with the reassurance that Jet probably won’t punch him out unless he really does something to earn it. “Not now, or at any point in the future,” he says, through gritted teeth. One of the tiny screws from the face of the watch rolls off the bar and under the counter. 

All in all, negotiations could be going better. 

Lucky for Juno, and probably even luckier for Rex, Buddy’s voice echoes down the spiral stairwell. “Something wrong, darling?” The woman herself enters a moment later, in a slick white suit that almost hides the line of a blaster at her hip. Jacket left unbuttoned, which shows just enough skin that Juno is reminded faintly that Vespa is a very lucky woman, and averts his eyes. She walked in with brisk urgency, but settles pretty quick when she determines nobody has any gaping holes in vital organs, leaning against the banister and looking the three of them over very thoroughly. “Oh, I see we have a guest.” 

Jet doesn’t sneer, exactly, but he’s so painfully neutral in his delivery that the message gets across anyway. “He is Juno’s guest.” 

Which is true, sure, but he’d really been hoping to get the Big Guy in his corner before bringing this up with the rest of them. So much for that. “You said you still had a position open on the ship.” Juno shrugs, and gestures to Rex again. “I’m...recommending him.” 

“Well, then.” Buddy’s amusement is clear. “We’d better call a family meeting, hadn’t we?” 

*

Five minutes in, Juno’s already pretty sure it’s going to be a lost cause. 

Rex doesn’t give them a lot to go on, beyond a long string of thefts on a seemingly random string of planets ranging across the Solar system to the Andromeda and far beyond. No background, and no name beyond the one he’s increasingly sure was made up on the spot back in the bar. No references to contact. It’s like he doesn’t exist. 

The pattern means something to Buddy, he can tell from the way she drums her long acrylic nails against the table and nods. Rita looks more bored than anything, doodling busily to herself and interjecting occasionally with the noises she makes to sound interested when she’s not listening, but then if Rex really is a master thief he’s not the type to end up on the streams, so. Juno’s not surprised her attention is elsewhere. 

Big Guy obviously has his issues with Rex already, and Vespa...well. Vespa’s not exactly charmed. She looks at Rex like the sight of him puts a sour taste in her mouth. “Where’d you say you picked this guy up, Steel?

Juno cringes. “He, uh. He was at the Board when we robbed it earlier?” 

“Christ,” Vespa sighs, running her fingers through her hair. Rex’s eyes fix on the filtration bracelet on her wrist, and he cringes, too. “So he’s up to his eyeballs in debt, too.” 

Her accusation hits right on the mark, from the way Rex tenses and says, coldly, “I hardly think that sets me apart from most of the people in this province.” He gestures to Vespa. “Yourself included.”

“Don’t you bring me into this,” she hisses back. “Not one person in this room is in this mission for the money, _Glass_ , and if you ask me bringing you on when you _are_ is just begging for you to turn around and sell us out to the highest bidder.” 

Rex is quiet, shrinking back into the dust-stained cloak around his shoulders. So is the rest of the crew, weighing and measuring and finding him wanting. Even Juno can’t entirely deny she has a point. There’s a hushed desperation to his voice that blends in perfect harmony with the chorus of beggars Juno’s met in the streets outside this lighthouse. “I need passage off Mars.” Hungry eyes fix on each of them in turn, and linger too long on Juno. “Secure me that, and I will repay you in any way I can. I promise you.” 

“Hm,” Buddy says, still drumming her nails, and half-smiles in that infuriating way she does when she’s visibly reserving judgement. “If that’s all you want, dear, it seems to me there’s very little to stop you vanishing into thin air on the very next planet we visit.” 

“Captain Aurinko, I--”

“Which is perfectly fine by me, you know. No sense throwing your lot in with a job you have no real interest in. We’d be short a crew member again, of course, but there’s no use counting your chickens in the first place until they’ve finished flying the coop.” 

“Actually,” Rita interrupts. When Juno turns to her, she’s looking inquisitively at Rex for the first time all evening. “I think we might need Mistah Glass to stick around a little longer.” 

There’s a familiar and very telling glint in her eye. Juno shifts further away on the couch, reflexively. 

Buddy’s smile grows full-fledged. “Do tell, Rita darling.” 

“ _Well_ ,” she begins, already breathless with conspiratorial excitement. “You know how you were having me do all that research on the former Outer Rim and the server farm and the--you know, _thing_ we’re after? I ain’t actually done most of that yet, on account of I got sidetracked by a couple documentaries that kept poppin’ up about all the old royalty on those planets during the war, and how some of ‘em just disappeared one day and everyone assumed they were dead but maybe they were really kidnapped, or replaced by lizard people, or they really did die but then they came back as zombie werewolf princesses--and ANYway, what I meant to say is Mistah Glass is a dead ringer for the _Angel of Brahma_.” 

She ends her pronouncement with a dramatic wiggling of her fingers to emphasize the last few words, leaning forward in her seat like she’s telling a ghost story over a bonfire. 

Juno doesn’t have a goddamn clue what she’s talking about. He looks between Rita and Rex again, to see if any clarity arises, and comes up short. 

Buddy leans back in her seat. “I’m afraid I can’t see what you’re getting at, dear.” 

Rita sighs. “Oh, you really gotta watch the miniseries, it had me on the edge of my seat, Captain A, I fell all the way off the sofa twice, bruised both my kneecaps smacking them on the coffee table.” 

Vespa growls under her breath. “This is stupid! What does it matter if Glass looks like some actor you saw on a stream about Brahma? Doesn’t get us any closer to the real place.” 

“Not an actor,” Rita says, gesturing again. Her purple nail polish is chipped, probably because Juno hasn’t been around to help her research by making popcorn and repainting them for a few days. “A long-lost _prince_.” 

Rex stifles a pang of laughter. There’s a complicated series of warring expressions on his face, all quickly smothered. “I’m not a prince,” he says. 

“Of course not,” Rita dismisses. “Whole family died in a big coup, all on the same day, it was real dramatic. But you _look_ like him. You could probably walk right up to anyone on Brahma and say “It’s me, your old pal Prince Peter Nureyev the Third, Grand Duke of So-and-So” and they’d at _least_ have to check and make sure you weren’t a ghost.” 

Buddy looks him up and down while Rex shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Well,” she muses. “It certainly captures the imagination, doesn’t it?” 

Arms crossed, Juno squints and looks closer, searching the arch of his sharp nose, the angular planes of his face. Real honest-to-god nobility, he doesn’t have a lot of experience with. But the marketable appearance of royalty carries the kind of advertising appeal that’s really popular in Hyperion City, and he gets the impression that a face like Rex’s could sell pretty much anything, given the right polish. Julian DiMaggio paid a lot of money for cheekbones like that, and here Rex is coming by them naturally. 

Vespa frowns, but her frown looks a little more thoughtful now. “You wanted a distraction, Bud,” she mumbles, “Dropping a long-lost prince in their laps would keep ‘em pretty fuckin’ distracted.” 

“Rita, darling, I’d like to see a little more of this Nureyev fellow, if you don’t mind.” 

Rita beams. She’s gonna be over the moon about this one for weeks, maybe even longer than the time she accidentally took the Halcyon Park Dachshund Snatcher out for coffee and dragged him back to the office in handcuffs, and then tried to smuggle one of the stolen puppies home under her cardigan. But for once, Juno doesn’t have to keep up the pretense of being the one in charge. 

The image she projects from her tablet is at least twenty years old, grainy with loss and flickering slightly as it struggles to stay in focus. 

Prince Peter Nureyev the Third can’t be older than fifteen, trussed up in a military dress uniform that makes him look like a living doll. A solemn, polite little face with a curl of dark hair falling artfully across his forehead, under the brim of a crown that sits too heavy on his head.

Rex stares at the boy he’s being hired to impersonate with impassive coolness, fingers folded together and tucked under his chin. His long hair falls around his face in a curtain, but his eyes are so bright. Like the eyes of the boy in the photo. 

Juno looks away. The blatant dishonesty of conning anyone with the miraculous return of a kid twenty years dead doesn’t sit right in his stomach, but it’s hard to deny Rex looks the part. Lucky coincidence. 

Buddy crosses one leg over her knee. “I suppose I have a job to offer you after all, Mister Glass. Welcome to the Carte Blanche.” He grins, and she holds up a finger, stalling him. “We leave Mars at sunrise tomorrow, so pack your things sharpish and be back bright and early, darling. Wouldn’t want to miss your flight.” 

“Of course,” Rex says, in profuse gratitude, caught halfway between a handshake and a bow. “Thank you, Captain Aurinko, you won’t regret this--”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Buddy drawls. “I’ll regret whatever I damn well want to.” 

Rex swallows, and nods, and looks to Juno for another long, lingering moment before turning on his heel and darting away like a shadow, vanishing in the time it takes him to blink. 

Jet hums low in his throat where he’s standing, scratching at the stubble on his chin. “Buddy,” he says, in a tone that Juno really doesn’t know how to interpret. 

“We’ll take it day by day, darling,” Buddy soothes, resting a hand on the crook of his arm. “Give him a fair shot. And besides, he’ll be Juno’s responsibility, more or less.” 

“ _What_.”

She turns a knowing smile on Juno that’s already swiftly becoming one of those expressions that makes him break out in hives on sight. “You vouched for the man, dear, it’s only fair.” 

Juno crosses his arms. “Doesn’t mean I signed up to feed and water him and take him on _walks_ ,” he argues. 

“I’m sure the two of you can work out the finer points together, Juno.” Buddy laughs like a pealing bell, and her grin goes a little ominous at the edges. “But I must admit I have a particular task in mind for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: i'll make an update schedule. like once a week, that sounds reasonable  
> me three days later: if i don't post i'll die


	3. takeoff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NOW: A flight off Mars.
> 
> THEN: A late-night shuttle ride.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: Mag's typical questionable parenting style in full force. ALSO police state violence! Both of these are central to the second section of the chapter

Peter’s waiting at the lighthouse before dawn. Sleep comes fitfully without a secure place to rest one’s head, and he hadn’t managed more than a few hours tucked surreptitiously between a cluster of tents before the sand started to kick up and woke him again, choking on dust. 

Sand scraping his skin raw and rough, and sun burning down like a malevolent, watchful eye. He’ll be very glad to see the last of the Cerberus Province. The last of Mars, too. 

The next destination remains uncertain. Le Verrier, perhaps, when they stop to refuel on the way out of the Solar system, and then off again in the first direction that looks promising. Or all the way to the Outer Rim, as he promised, to dig for answers in the furthest corners of the settled galaxy. Follow paper trail after paper trail until the last lead disappears without a trace into the murky fog of lost history. 

At some point in his life, a man ought to get tired of tilting at windmills. Accumulate enough wealth to retire on, and settle down somewhere, and move on. Give up on a question that’s gone unanswered for twenty years, and be content simply never to know. 

Peter wipes the grit from his stinging face with his sleeve, and peers up at the red horizon over the edge of the crater. A name is a terrible thing to lose. 

Jet Sikuliaq is the first to find him lingering in the shadow of the doorway, the hard line of his mouth tilting subtly down at the corners in the most understated scowl Peter has seen in a long while. He shutters the windows of the bar and flips the sign from _open_ to _closed indefinitely_ , and looks him over with dismissive scrutiny. “I would advise you retrieve your baggage now,” Sikuliaq says, “Unless you intend to depart empty-handed. We will not be able to accommodate a return trip to retrieve any belongings you leave behind.” 

As it happens, Peter’s worldly possessions are limited to what he can fit in the pockets of his coat. Anything else has always been immaterial, stolen and used and discarded again as swiftly as the need arises. “I travel light,” he answers. 

He follows the master thief back through the back rooms of the lighthouse bar, and to the loading dock in the lot behind where the ship waits, doors down and crew lingering inside the bay. Several eyes are on him in an instant, lingering uncomfortably long, calculating or disapproving or suspicious. People are very uncertain what to do with Peter. It never seems to occur to them that he might be as much a mystery to himself as he appears from an outside perspective. 

Juno Steel’s eye is on him too, but his is different. He looks at Peter like he can see straight through him. Like he _knows_ him. It’s not true, of course, but it makes for a delightful change of pace. 

“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Buddy Aurinko says, cheerfully, with a proud tilt of her chin. “I take it this means you’re still interested.”

“Extremely,” Peter tells her, diplomatically, because the proposal does intrigue him. “If you really think I can play a convincing Prince.” 

“I don’t,” she negates, with a blunt smile. “Not yet, at any rate. But we’ll make a champion con out of you by the time we clear the Kuiper Belt, and give you a decent coat of polish to help sell it. Rita compiled a _wonderful_ little dossier, and Juno here has been volunteered to oversee your training throughout the flight.” She gestures to the latter, who shoves his hands deep into his pockets and shuffles uncomfortably. 

“Volunteered,” he echoes, in an unmistakable grumble. “Not the word I would have picked, but sure, yeah.” 

“Ah.” Peter clears his throat. “Well, I suppose that all sounds equitable enough to me, Captain. When do we depart?” 

She stands, brushing her silvery chiffon skirts into order, and squares her shoulders. “Just this minute, if everyone is quite finished saying their goodbyes and making their arrangements.” 

The diminutive secretary who’d proposed the plan last night waves a hand idly, still deeply absorbed in her phone. “Yeah, you got it. Just makin’ sure me and Mistah Steel’s friends don’t think we’re dead and sell off all the stuff in my apartment. Had to leave my favorite model train collection behind, you know, there wasn’t enough room in the suitcase with all the snacks I had to pack.” 

“I already told them, Rita,” Juno interrupts, still grumbling. “Back before we left Hyperion.” 

“Sure,” she agrees, not looking up, “But no offense, Boss, most of the time when you send a voicemail it raises a lot more questions than it answers and you also kinda make it seem like you got kidnapped when you really mean you’re goin’ on vacation, so I’m just writing again to make sure.”

“Onward and upward, then,” Buddy Aurinko announces, with a shake of her head. The loading doors slide shut by slow degrees, shutting out the last gusts of sand and the poison sun rising overhead. “And not a moment too soon.” 

Peter agrees, silently. He watches through one of the cramped cabin windows as Mars recedes into the distance, shrinking from a sea of red dust to only another tiny glowing point against the blackness of the sky. 

*

The kid squirms in his seat, trying like hell to peer through the tinted shuttle doors and steal a glimpse of the world planetside. He’s not gonna get too far, staring-wide-eyed into the darkness, so Mag lets him be, quietly flicking through the pilot’s controls, taking down the alarms system that would object to their little unscheduled, unsupervised outing. 

“Why is it so dark?” he asks, when peeking out the window proves fruitless. “Some of them must be awake, it’s barely ten.” 

Mag spares him a raised eyebrow. “Curfew, Pete.” 

“Oh.” He frowns a little. “I didn’t know.” 

“You heard what your father said,” Mag explains. “Lots of unrest, too many protests, complaints about the war. People were getting rowdy. Curfew’s meant to keep them out of trouble.” 

Peter bites at his lip, hesitates, and then pipes up anyway. “Isn’t that what the Guardian Angel System is for? Keeping people out of trouble?” 

The shuttle docks smoothly and silently, and the door slides open, letting in the stale night air. The kid’s staring at Mag the stubborn way that means he wants a straight answer. He knows this is another lesson. Just hasn’t put together yet what the lesson’s supposed to be about. 

“Of course, Your Highness.” Mag tries to keep his tone as jovial as possible, keep the anger that’s been burning in his stomach for years carefully hidden. If he doesn’t set about cracking this egg as gently as he can, things are liable to get messy. “But you can’t just arrest troublemakers without giving them a law to break. Imagine the uproar, hm?” 

It’s not the kind of joke you laugh at. Mag tries to crack a smile, but from the way the little prince keeps frowning it’s unconvincing. 

It was a big risk, persuading him to come down here at all. Took a few days of gentle suggestions, hints and schemes and at least one outright lie. Lucky for Mag he has an in with the woman who patrols the shuttle deck. A little flirting and flustering and he can come and go any time he wants, though of course Pete had to sneak himself onboard while her back was turned. The bluebloods barely let the kid out of the palace without an armed guard and a strict timetable, leaving New Kinshasa completely would have been out of the question. Good job the kid’s learned from Mag that it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission. 

“Should _we_ be worried?” Pete whispers, ducking out of the shuttle to follow Mag down the darkened street. “About breaking curfew?” 

Mag scoffs. “Different laws for folks like you and me,” he dismisses. “The system only recognizes people who aren’t registered on New Kinshasa.” Not that the papers Mag is registered under are his own, but they get the job done. No targets on his back tonight. 

“What about him?” 

Peter points, and Mag follows the line of his gaze across the square to a figure darting out of an alley, moving quickly down the sidewalk under the awnings of the darkened shops while glancing over his shoulder furtively.

The distant man moves from shadow to shadow the way Mag’s been teaching Peter for years now, looking jumpy and pale. A hungry, waifish figure, the kind too malnourished to show his face on the streets when the parades come through to show the royals off in a laserproof carriage and celebrate how prosperous Brahma is under their benevolent rule. 

They don’t look like a rebel to Mag. Just a bystander running late. Wrong place, wrong time, and about to pay for it any minute now. Mag motions Peter to stop, finger to his lips, and ducks behind a lamppost. The kid tucks in against his side, half-hidden under his arm, watching intently.

The stranger moves to turn down a sidestreet, and freezes. Looks down at the red dot of the laser sight that’s appeared on their chest at just about the same time Peter and Mag spot it. His eyes go cornered-animal wide, and he runs. 

He doesn’t get far. 

The kid grips hard at Mag’s hand. His breathing is fast and shallow, but to his credit he doesn’t shout. It’s been a good long while since Mag saw his first death, and he’s sure he had at least a few more years under his belt then than the little prince has now. 

Blood runs red in the street. A sight any parent should shield a child’s eyes from. But Mag can’t be a parent and a teacher all at once, and he has a duty. A hard, crucial lesson to impart. He wraps his arm around Pete’s shoulders, and holds him steady. 

He stares at the body lying crumpled and abandoned on the pavement, pale and stricken, and says, shakily, “Mag, what--”

“Not here, my boy,” he says, soothing as he can be, clutching tight at the kid’s shoulder and motioning him at last to turn away. Mag leads him back to the shuttle in heavy, stunned silence, quick and quiet as he can, and helps him clamber in the passenger side, still trembling head to toe. Pete stays tucked in the crook of his arm as the vehicle slowly rises, carrying the pair of them back to the floating city where only one has ever really belonged. 

Brings Mag no joy to see him afraid like that, lesson or no lesson. When the shuttle docks back on New Kinshasa they sit inside a minute longer, motionless and silent. Mag sighs, and reaches up to ruffle the kid’s hair with one calloused hand. “I’m sorry you had to see that, Pete.”

“They _killed_ him,” the kid whispers, horrified. 

“They did.” 

“Why?” 

Mag clears his throat. “I suppose somebody thought it would be easier than going to the trouble of arresting him. Less paperwork.” 

Peter Nureyev looks up at him with glassy eyes, watching him for a moment with a sharp and calculating fierceness. He sets his jaw. “This has happened before,” he says, a little distantly. 

“It happens every day,” Mag confirms, a little of the bitterness he’s kept hidden for so long rising to the surface. “Power like that machine can grant you always corrupts, Peter.” 

His young face goes hard with determination, and Peter sits up, chin tilted upward. “When I’m the Tsar,” he announces, with sudden clarity. “I won’t let it happen anymore. I’ll take the Guardian Angel System and I’ll--I’ll throw it in the bottom of the ocean, and it won’t hurt anybody ever again. That was _wrong_.”

“And you’ll have my support, if that’s what you want to do, Highness.” He’d make a good figurehead, with a noble streak like that. Still could be, with a little guidance. Mag’s fiercely proud of him, for all he knows that it isn’t enough to sit back and wait and do things by the book while innocent people die every day. He nods thoughtfully at the little prince, and says, slowly and carefully, “Trouble is, that’s still a long way away.” 

A little of the fire in the kid’s eyes dampens, and he looks to Mag with renewed anguish. Brilliant kid. It only takes another moment for the pieces to fall into place. He catches on fast, kneeling on the leather seat and gripping at Mag’s sleeve with a feverish excitement that means he’s found the point of the lesson at last. “Then we’ll take it down ourselves,” he vows. “You and me. We’ll make it right now.” 

Mag smiles, his old heart swelling with pride and satisfaction. “I think that sounds like a fine idea, Pete.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i apologize that in order to experience the joys of Juno And Peter Prince Training you must suffer the ordeal of Mag And Brahma Being Upsetting but i WILL provide it. i WILL


	4. learning the ropes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The counterfeit prince starts his training.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: some canon-typical casual alcohol consumption, but overall pretty light

Juno waits nearly a full day before going after Rex, and even then he’s only spurred on by the lingering hard look Buddy shoots him while he brews his morning coffee, cocking one pristinely painted eyebrow as she sips at her liquid breakfast.

It’s not like he’s been avoiding Rex on purpose. He’s made plenty of eye contact, even, brushing past him in the hallways or lingering glances across the table during meetings. But Rex has this way of always seeming conveniently preoccupied, smiling a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes and nodding politely and disappearing when Juno turns his back for too long. 

And maybe Juno’s been distracted too, caught up in the way his place in the universe has so fundamentally shifted, leaving Mars behind. It’s easy to feel a lot smaller with the stars up close like this, hanging just overhead at all hours like he could reach out and touch them if he wanted. 

Hovering awkwardly in front of Rex’s door with a heavy paper file under one arm, Juno feels a lot more out of place than usual. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and squares his shoulders before he reaches out to tap his knuckles against the surface like it might blow up in his face if he knocks too hard. 

There’s a hesitant pause from inside, and then a quiet answer of, “Yes, come in.” 

It’s an unassuming berth, a bed and a porthole and a desk that folds down from the opposite wall. A mirror reflection of Juno’s own room, on the opposite end of the ship. Rex hasn’t made much of a home, save for shrugging off his sand-crusted outer layers and hanging them on one post of the bedframe.

He looks good, though, stripped of a little of that armor, in a thin, soft shirt with his long hair pulled back into a loose tie. Less dust and smoke and hunger and desperation clouding his face, though his expression is no easier to read for it. It’s hard to look away from the captivating softness and sharpness of him, all his keen edges catching the light like a goddamn jewel, or something maudlin like that. 

A little too late, Juno realizes he’s staring, and clears his throat, gesturing with the sheaf of papers. “I, uh. Brought this.” 

Rex smiles, thankfully not wide enough to flash all his sharp teeth, so Juno has a chance to get the blush spreading across his cheeks back under control. “So I see.” 

He takes the offered dossier with good grace, despite Juno’s awkward grumbling and shuffling, flips through it with a slightly dispassionate interest. Juno can’t blame him. Besides Rita’s sections of color commentary, it’s dry enough stuff that reading over the lines of succession put Juno to sleep the night before, and woke him up with crinkled documents plastered to the side of his face. Paperwork was never Juno’s strong suit, even at the height of the detective business. Hell, he’s pretty sure there isn’t a single worse option on board to play Glass’ study buddy, but. Captain’s orders. 

“Well,” Rex says, flipping between pages on Boyars and Countesses and Duchys. “I can’t say I’ve taken on a con of this particular scope in a long while.” 

“Yeah, well. We’ve got time.” Juno folds his arms, sinking down to sit on the edge of the bed beside him. “Once we get out of the Solar system, it’s memorize all the Tsars in order or stare into hyperspace, and personally I think I’d take the Tsars over that much time alone with my thoughts.” 

Rex laughs, a low, warm chuckle that winds its way between Juno’s ribs and makes his heart jump uncomfortably in his chest. “Then I suppose you and I are going to be seeing a lot of one another, hm, Juno?” 

Only just after regaining his composure, Juno feels the blush surge back into his face at full force. _Goddamnit._ “Right.” He clears his throat. “Yeah, I was thinking we could start with an overview of the planet’s history--”

“We ought to get to know one another a little better first, don’t you think?” Rex interrupts, and when Juno dares a glance back at the thief he’s dog-earing the top corner of the page, his tone flippant but his face clearly contemplative. “Only I was wondering if you could satisfy a curiosity of mine--Captain Aurinko called you a detective, earlier. What’s a detective doing on a pirate ship?” 

Juno bites his tongue around a sigh. “I’m not gonna slap you in handcuffs, if that’s what you’re worried about.” 

“Oh, Juno,” Rex says, a little of the tension in his shoulders breaking over another laugh. “Not until the second date at least.” 

“I just--” People have won medals for lesser feats of strength than it takes to force his brain not to short-circuit at that. “Needed to get away for a while,” he manages, lamely. 

It feels like the understatement of the century, but it’s hard to put into words the way he used to wear Hyperion City like an albatross around his neck, the weight and guilt and misplaced sense of responsibility dragging him down and choking the life out of him again and again until he finally wised up enough to realize that he could stop trying to be the savior of the known universe and just live, instead. 

By the look on his face, Rex can tell there’s more to it, but he doesn’t pry, going back to flipping pages in the file on his lap. “You picked a very unconventional place to vacation, then. In my experience most people just book a cruise to Earth.”

“Probably,” Juno admits. “I don’t know, it wasn’t about retirement or anything, just.” He takes a moment to feel his weightlessness, the way the ship’s artificial gravity can barely tether his feet to the floor, and feels a bittersweet smile tug at his lips. “It’s weird, how when you grow up somewhere you can love it and hate it all at the same time. How it can be the only place in the galaxy where you really _belong_ for so many years but then one day you can just wake up and realize you’ve outgrown it. Like the universe just tells you when it’s time to go.” 

He glances up from where his hands are folded in his lap and sees a surge of some nameless emotion quickly smothered on Rex’s lean face. “I suppose so, yes.” He looks...lost, kind of?

“Sorry,” Juno mumbles, looking away. “I guess that didn’t make a lot of sense--”

“It’s fine,” Rex says, a little strained, for some reason. “I understand you perfectly, Juno. I felt much the same way, when I left...when I left home.” The pads of his fingers pull at the pages, and he flips back to the start of the dossier. “Where were we, then? History of Brahma?”

Juno shakes it off, leaning closer to Rex’s side to peer at the information in the file, wondering quietly why he’s left with such an unshakeable impression that Rex just told him a barefaced lie. 

*

In the darkness, Peter’s head swims with half-remembered names and blurry photographs that melt from one into the next. He sits in his berth for as long as it takes to recognize that the echoes will not fade long enough to let him rest, and then abandons sleep completely, shrugging on his shirt and slipping quietly into the dark hallway. 

Brahma was settled in the late thirtieth century. Brahma fought with the Outer Rim Confederacy at the onset of the war but quickly retreated into itself, built enormous artificial rings of floating turrets and closed every city in impenetrable domes and maintained itself that way for a century and a half, peacefully locked behind its own walls. Brahma is one of the planets still on his list, and he does not know what he expects to find there. He can’t help but suspect that all he will find is another dead end in a long line of dead ends. 

Perhaps it would be better not to try his luck with it, just yet. 

Peter pads down the hall and around past the shared living rooms, the engine room, the luggage bay that holds the cars. He inches past the kitchen, every footfall light as a feather, and stops cold when the light flickers on behind him. 

“Couldn’t sleep, darling?” Buddy Aurinko asks, amiably, sprawled in one of the dining chairs for all the world like she hadn’t been lying in wait. A little too pristine to pass for serendipitous chance, though. Her velvet dressing gown is embroidered with suns and stars, and her hair is still styled under a long red wig, curls pinned carefully to obscure one eye. 

Peter sidles meekly over to the table and takes a seat, feigning a yawn and stretch. “I’m rather prone to it, I’m afraid,” he offers, by way of explanation. “A light sleeper.” 

Aurinko makes a quiet noise of understanding. “I’m afraid I let myself become something of a night owl, in my earlier retirement,” she says sympathetically. “Haven’t quite gotten used to turning in when the sun sets, yet.” 

Fingers tapping against his knee while he calculates, Peter frowns. “And, I suppose, you wanted to speak to me.” 

“Now what gave you that idea?” She grins, crooked, her lip ring glinting gold in the low light. “Oh, where are my manners? Drink, Rex?” 

“Now and again.” Peter folds his arms against the table, watches the Captain carefully as she unstoppers a decanter, pours a finger of a crystalline clear spirit into two glasses and sets them on the table with the firm hand of a practiced host. 

It would be quite nonsensical of her to poison him so crudely, so Peter chances a sip. It burns bright on his tongue and down his throat and leaves his lips tingling faintly. 

“Funny name you have,” Aurinko says, at last, and Peter nods. Silly to think the issue would never be raised, among such a perceptive and practiced group of professionals. “Rex Glass.” 

“If you’re curious about the origin--”

“Not that,” she says, with a dismissive handwave, and a tiny smile that makes his stomach drop like he’s going over a cliff. “I think you and I both know what I mean, darling. It’s not the name that intrigues me so much as the way it vanishes into thin air on the slightest scrutiny. Most people leave some kind of a footprint behind, even when they use an alias.” She toasts him, with her glass, and throws back the rest of the liquor. “Except, of course, for you: the Nameless Thief.” 

Peter smiles back at her, but it feels brittle on his face. His palms are suddenly clammy with sweat. “I suppose I hadn’t considered it was possible to be both notorious and anonymous,” he rasps. “Do I have a reputation, then?” 

Buddy Aurinko leans back in her chair. “Only to some,” she assuages. “There’s little pattern I could find in the kind of work you pick up, or the names you work under, dear, to your credit.”

“Ah.” 

“What interests me more,” she continues, “Is where you’re going. Jumping from planet to planet all mad-jack like that, darling, there has to be either something you’re running from, or something you’re running to. Stands to reason I should give you fair warning that I mean to know which, in my capacity as your Captain.” 

Peter presses his lips together in a thin line, and stares down at the the synth-wood-grain of the tabletop, one hand coming up to play with the pendant around his neck, real-wood-grain rough against the pad of his thumb. “What are you searching for, on Brahma?” he asks. 

“Took you long enough to wonder,” Aurinko says, amused. “I was beginning to think you intended to go through with the whole plan flying completely blind. One ought to employ a dash of healthy skepticism in their employer’s intentions, I’ve always thought, or you’re liable to wind up with the short end of the stick.”

“First rule of thieving?” Peter interrupts, wryly, and then shuts his eyes as a wave of vertigo overtakes him, quite suddenly. When he opens them again, his face is in his hands, and the back of his tongue tastes like iron. Aurinko makes as if to stand, and Peter shakes his head. “Apologies,” he says, faintly. “I don’t know what came over me, I….” 

The Captain takes his glass, and returns it filled again. Peter frowns, and she scoffs, “It’s water, darling, don’t be ridiculous.” 

Fold it up. File it away. Peter forces his aching head upright, and sips the water the moment he feels he can stomach it. “It’s not money you’re after,” he recalls, at length. “Vespa said as much.” 

She grins again, one hip propped against the table. “Vespa oversimplified, darling, there’s plenty of money in good deeds done dirt cheap.” 

“And a sizeable reward for returning a dead prince to life, I expect.” 

“Now you’re on the trolley!” Aurinko does him the courtesy of not letting her eyes linger too long on Peter himself, allowing him the privacy to regain his composure after his momentary lapse. “Though I only truly need you to keep up the act for a few hours, darling.” She sketches the plan out into the air between them. “Word is the Chancellor’s planning a little shindig to celebrate twenty years since the old regime fell. We introduce Prince Peter Nureyev to the mix, and then every politician on that planet has your attention. Meanwhile, the rest of our merry band can pay a visit to an old server farm on the far end of the hemisphere and liberate a few priceless artifacts plus a decade and change of medical debt records from across the galaxy. We’re in the business of cutting out the middleman in Curemother deals, this crew and me, and Brahma’s been locked up tight for so long that this is the first chance we’ve had to get close enough to relocate their stock.”

Peter thinks about the Brahmese history he’s been drilling for a week now, and listens for the words she leaves unsaid. Brahma isn’t likely to let them close enough to the surface to do the job for anything short of a miracle. His role is more essential than she let on, before. 

Peter’s thumb brushes over the wooden charm of his necklace again, and he crosses one ankle over the other. “I’m looking for someone,” he says, eventually. “On every planet I visit. I don’t know his name, but I’m quite optimistic I’ll know him when I see him.”

Captain Aurinko glances at him from beneath the curtain of her hair. “Running to and not from, then.” 

“I suppose I am,” Peter agrees, rising to his feet. “You’ll forgive me if I leave it at that, Captain.” 

From the look on her face, she has little intention of dropping the subject, but she nods along anyway. “Thank you, darling,” she murmurs. “For assuaging an old woman’s curiosity.” 

Peter inclines his head in an informal bow, braced to make a quick retreat, and hesitates, at the threshold. “Thank you for the drink.” 

*

“Nikolai the Second,” Rex recites, matter-of factly, pacing up and down the length of the cabin. “Then Constantine, Mikhail, Tatyana, Peter the First--really, Juno, if you’re going to tune me out, I’d prefer you at least nod and smile occasionally to preserve my dignity.” 

Juno’s attention snaps back to his face from where it had drifted, a little further south. “Right. Yeah, sorry. Who were we on? Titania, or whatever her name is?”

His mouth twitches in a tired grimace, and Rex perches on the fold-out desk, overshadowed by the images of long-dead kings and counselors and small-time political figureheads plastered to the wall over his head in an elaborate map. He pushes his glasses aside to pinch at the bridge of his nose, as if warding off a headache. 

For all that Juno is used to inspiring that reaction in people, he winces. “Listen, Rex, I--”

“No,” he interrupts, sharp face drawn with exhaustion. “No, I understand. Pure information with no context. It’s very difficult to...to get a foothold on. A name on its own might be a useful signifier to the senses, but rather futile without a story behind it, don’t you think?” 

Juno stays in his awkward sprawl across the bed, looking between Rex and the portraits overhead. “What do you want to do, memorize their coffee orders?” 

“Peter Nureyev knew these people,” says Rex, insistent. “Personally. Perhaps not especially well, but certainly better than a grade-school textbook. I can’t be especially convincing if all I have are their names, can I?” 

“Guess not,” Juno groans, and resigns himself to a long night of research. “Fine, yeah. You got Rita and Steel Investigations on the case, Rex. I’ll get you those coffee orders, we can talk pets and allergies and extramarital affairs of a bunch of dead politicians next time.”

Rex offers him a thin whisper of a smile, and even that tiny sliver of a grin makes Juno’s heart race. “I look forward to it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah....needs more gay shit i think. tell me your thoughts!


	5. a clerical error

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rex Glass miscalculates. Peter takes the fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: canon-typical threats of violence, trauma

Peter hears the footfall a moment before the knock at the door, and knows without waiting to hear it which announcement is forthcoming. “Family meeting,” Jet Sikuliaq rumbles, as the door slides to. 

Juno turns to him with an apologetic shrug, the file sliding off his lap as he jumps to his feet. Peter waves him away. “Go on, then,” he says, with a crooked grin. “Don’t keep the good Captain waiting.” 

It’s been quite inconvenient at times, the clear division between Peter and the rest of the crew. The ones that Buddy Aurinko calls _family_ , and holds close in her confidence, and the one left behind to wait. But he knows there are elements in Aurinko’s business affairs that do not concern him, as a temporary liaison to the team, and why it is only common sense to leave him out of these meetings, for practicality’s sake. 

He ought to prefer it that way. He’s done all his best work on his own. 

“Sorry.” Juno wavers, as if torn between staying and leaving. “We can, uh...pick this up later?” 

“It will not be a short meeting,” Sikuliaq corrects, from the doorway. Juno looks a little crestfallen, but shrugs it off. 

“Tomorrow, then,” Peter tells him, and takes up the discarded dossier, glancing sidelong at the clock as he does so. He’d assumed this afternoon’s meeting was called earlier than most, but unless the mechanism is running fast the truth is that he’d simply allowed the time to get away from him. “I’ll just practice in the meantime, shall I?” 

“Sorry,” Juno says again, as he makes his retreat, and the door shuts again behind him. 

A long meeting. The details of the paperwork that will carry them beyond the Solar borders into the former Outer Rim, perhaps, or even the final approach to the server farm. Something Rex Glass has little investment in, and need not involve himself with. 

Peter’s own interests are a little more immediate. 

He shuffles the papers in the dossier, now stuffed with personal accounts of a hundred strangers’ lives in colorfully exhaustive detail, and sets the file aside. Wraps himself in his hooded cloak before slipping out into the hall after the departing pair. 

The sounds of distant conversation echo down the hall from the family rooms -- indistinct chatter, the muffled ringing of a laugh. Peter turns toward the cabins instead. 

Adjoining his own berth is Rita’s cabin, and Sikuliaq’s across from that. Juno’s room bordering on Sikuliaq’s. And the last, a little larger to gracefully accommodate two at once, at the far end of the hall. 

The problem with attempting to observe Vespa Ilkay’s movements is that she seems to constantly anticipate being watched, and account for it well in advance. The first time he’d attempted to re-enter one of the passcodes to this bedroom, the spring trap in the lock nearly took his hand off, and he’d spent a frantic day and a half making himself scarce in the hopes of avoiding suspicion. 

Clearly, there are decoy codes, and there are real codes. Caution is called for. Peter enters his second attempt with bated breath, and exhales quietly when the mechanism unlocks with a satisfying click. He wraps his fingers around the handle, then stops. Unsheaths his knife and runs the blade along the crack between the door and its frame until he finds a tripwire, and lifts carefully to unstring it. 

This time, when he opens the door, there is only silence, and stillness. Peter ducks inside, and turns to the filing cabinet on the far side of the bed. 

Ten years of documents, at least, were liberated from the Board back in the Cerberus Province. Medical records, but also personal ones, linking each beneficiary of the Curemother to every possible connection on every known planet. And if their current business model is any indication, the Aurinko crime family has liberated these kinds of files more than once in their time. 

Peter would be remiss, to let that wealth of knowledge pass him by, when perhaps, somewhere in the depths of it all, he might find a fragment of a _whisper_ of the answers he needs. 

He kneels and slides open the first drawer, working quickly as he can, leafing methodically through pages and scanning names, places, searching for a hint of anything familiar. _Sanchez, Cassius. Vale, Zelda. Birch, Henry. Neptune. Venus. Earth._

There may not be another opportunity. Pulse pounding in his ears, Peter shuts the drawer, and tries another. _Wei, Suyin. D’Angelo, Arthur. Both from Mars._

The names blend into one another in a long chain, the planets all places he has been already, half the records marking the individuals they belong to as _deceased_ , _presumed deceased_ or, much more infrequently, _paid in full_. Peter shuts the second drawer, moves on to the third, and grits his teeth when the first file he procures shows _Ilkay, Vespa_ scrawled across the top, and _Ranga_ beside it. 

Peter folds it quickly back into the drawer, and goes to pull out another, and goes abruptly still as the light from the hallway washes over the side of his face. 

Vespa’s sharp eyes are hard as flint. Out of the corner of his vision, he sees her press her lips together and then shake her head once, twice, and blink. “Hey, Sikuliaq, c’mere.” she says, casually, distantly. 

Peter swallows, and straightens, nudging the drawer closed. Out of time. 

Vespa steps aside to give the larger thief space in the doorway. He looks Peter over, and nods, subtly, to confirm that her vision is not leading her astray. “Okay,” she says, her voice the kind of controlled quiet that comes between a lightning strike and a thunderclap. “You lost, _Glass_?” 

It would have been prudent to prepare an alibi, but Peter had scarcely expected to make it through the door. He swallows. “I suppose you wouldn’t believe me if I told you this isn’t what it looks like,” he offers, tentatively. 

Vespa takes a step closer, and Jet mirrors her, broad shoulders filling the doorway. “I hope you have a _real_ good excuse, then, because it _looks_ like you broke into my goddamn room.” 

An airy, nervous laugh slips out, and Peter braces himself to run. “Oh dear, I must have taken a wrong turn at the lavatory, my mistake--”

“That’s _it_!” Vespa snarls, and in a flash she’s advancing on him, blade in hand. Peter turns, and Sikuliaq has stepped to the side to block the entrance, cutting off his retreat. “I’m sick of watching this creep sneak around doing god only knows what behind all our backs.” Jet doesn’t move to restrain him, but when Peter tries to duck to one side he shifts again, subtly, keeping between him and the door. He stumbles back again, and Vespa is there, shoving him against the cabinets, hard. “What do you want?” she demands, “Who the hell are you? You have ten seconds to give me a real fucking name, or I’m gonna cut it out of you.” The point of the knife presses bruisingly hard against his stomach.

Peter throws up his hands, placating. “Really, Ms. Ilkay, I don’t think all of this is necessary, I can explain--”

“ _Ten_ ,” she growls. “Nine--”

Faced with no better options and no convenient lie springing to his tongue, Peter falters. “I...I don’t have one,” he gasps, panicked. 

Vespa pauses her countdown, confusion writ plain on her face. “You don’t have a goddamn name?” 

A slightly shaky laugh spills out of Peter without his control, and he clings to the corner of the filing cabinet to hold him up as his legs waver unsteadily beneath him. “I suppose I did, once,” he rationalizes. “But I don’t...I can’t remember what it was, anymore.” 

It’s been years since he said it aloud, hasn’t spoken the words to another living soul in much longer than that. Peter feels himself beginning to slide down the wall, while Vespa backs away, crossing her arms over her chest. Sikulaq’s hand grips at his arm, steadying him, maneuvering him into a chair before he collapses altogether in an undignified heap.

Peter curls his fingers into the material of his trousers, and shuts his eyes. “I’m told I was found unconscious by the side of a road,” he begins, slowly, feeling rather lightheaded, “in the first snowstorm of the year. On Akna,” he clarifies, the single pinpoint in the vast, blank map of the universe he can mark with any certainty. One hand rises to tangle in his long hair, brushing it away from the side of the scalp where the jagged white line of the old scar is still visible, behind his left ear. “There was a rather nasty head wound to be treated,” he explains, “But when it was patched up and it came time to process me it transpired that I couldn’t tell the officials the first thing about who I was or where I came from. Not even a name.” 

Vespa’s eyes flash to the scar and back to his face, and her expression is focused and grim but not as angry as it had been. Peter can scarcely bring himself to care, feeling rather like the story is being bled out of him now. 

“My fingerprints didn’t match the local records, so they assumed I had arrived on planet recently. It was a fairly common practice at the end of the war, I’m sure you know. People disappearing without a trace, and refugees reappearing conveniently a few planets over.” It’s difficult, to keep his voice steady and impassive enough to relate the story, with the memory of that terrifying, yawning emptiness fresh in his mind, dragged out of the dark corner he kept it safely hidden in for so long. He can’t fold it away now, only confront it and try not to allow the feeling to overwhelm him completely. “I suppose they deemed me a little too old to be a proper fit for the foster system, or it was already at a surplus, because they simply handed me a temporary identification card and sent me on my way again.” 

“So what,” Vespa says, after an uncomfortable, shaky silence. “You’re John Doe, officially?” 

“Peter,” he admits, through clenched teeth. “Surnames aren’t often used, on Akna, but I believe that was pulled from a list of acceptable common titles, for an ID that expired twenty years ago. Officially, I suppose, I’m nobody at all. But Peter,” he repeats. “Inasmuch as it counts.” 

“Funny coincidence.” She sounds more wry than accusatory. 

Peter shrugs. “It’s not as if I truly believe I’m a dead Grand Duke.” 

Jet Sikuliaq hums, thoughtfully, and when Peter looks he finds he is being carefully observed. “If you cannot remember _not_ being the long lost prince,” he points out, “Then there is a chance you could be. The timelines are compatible, and Rita has been showing me many of her favorite documentary streams--” 

Allowing the idea any purchase in his head sends it spinning, makes his chest feel tight and his throat close up. “I’m not a prince,” Peter interrupts, harsher than he’d intended. “Please. I’m an amnesiac, not a fool.” 

Sikuliaq frowns, but relents. “If it upsets you so profoundly, I will not pursue this line of questioning any further.” 

Peter breathes in, and out again. Fold it up. File it away. “Thank you.” 

The drawer he had been perusing is jammed slightly open. Vespa looks down her nose at it, and shuts it with a kick. “You were rooting through the medical records for something, huh?” 

Perhaps the dots are not so easy to connect for anyone who has lived a less singleminded existence than Peter himself has. “Well, yes,” he admits, flatly, and elaborates, after another long silence. “I don’t know my name _yet_. That hardly means I’m content to leave the question unresolved forever.” 

Vespa curses under her breath, and all three lapse into a last, lingering quiet. After a minute, she jerks her head to the side, gesturing to the doorway. “Fine. Get out, we’re done here. If I catch you in this room again without a goddamn signed invitation I’ll keelhaul you, got it?” 

Peter’s legs are unsteady as a newborn foal’s, and he braces himself against the doorframe, face still prickling with cold sweat. “I suppose you’re going to tell the Captain next,” he says, faintly. 

Jet’s expression, of course, gives nothing away, but Vespa rolls her eyes. “No shit, Glass.” 

It’s only to be expected, but Peter feels the lead weight in the pit of his stomach regardless. “Alright,” he murmurs, more to himself than anything. “Alright, then.” 

Out of time, he thinks again, in more ways than one. 

*

Packing takes a matter of minutes. He travels light. Peter tucks away his knives and his odds and ends and stolen creds and food enough for a few days into the pockets of his coat. Strips the berth down of every trinket he’d hidden away for safekeeping, tucks the wooden charm he’s carried with him since Akna and the earliest days he can remember into the back of his boot where it cannot be easily prised away from him. Ties back his long hair, and settles on the edge of the bed to await judgement. 

They’ll take him as far as Le Verrier before throwing him off the ship, if they’re merciful. If they aren’t, though, if they plan to maroon him in an escape pod to make his own way back to land or toss him out of the airlock without even that shred of leniency, things will be more difficult. He thinks Juno could be persuaded to vouch for him, if it comes to that, but nothing is certain. 

He could strike now, before giving them the opportunity to choose. Wrest control of the ship for himself, and make the most of this admittedly rocky shift in circumstances. Divide the crew and pick them off one at a time, and stake his life on his ability to move quickly and decisively before the rest catch on. 

Decisiveness, though, is his stumbling block. He can’t trust his own hands, shaking like leaves. Can’t trust his body not to betray him utterly, and leave him hesitating in some crucial moment, frozen with a knife to someone’s throat, too weak to follow through. 

Peter’s face falls into his hands, and he very nearly jolts out of his body when the knock sounds at the door. 

He knows whose knock it is in an instant, of course, but he’s rather taken by surprise when it’s followed by a familiar hesitant silence, as though his assent is looked for even now. 

“Come in,” he says, a little lingering unsteadiness in his voice. He forces his posture upright to look Juno Steel in the face as he enters. 

Juno stops halfway to his usual spot on the edge of the bed. “Vespa and the big guy filled the rest of us in,” he explains, stilted. 

Peter looks back to his hands, folded in his lap, to bypass the temptation to analyze whether Juno looks at him differently than before. “Yes, I thought they might.” 

“Rex--” 

“Please, Juno, just.” He exhales, short and sharp. “Tell me. Has she passed judgement yet?” 

Juno looks briefly confused. “You mean Buddy? Yeah, I think she said she was putting you on dishwashing duty for two weeks. Why?” 

Peter blinks, feels a ringing in his ears. “Dishwashing,” he echoes, disbelieving. 

“Listen, if you have a problem with it, talk to her yourself, I’m sure she’ll commute your sentence if you ask nicely--” 

A harsh bark of laughter spills past his lips without his consent, and Peter curls in tighter around himself, feeling like nothing so much as a balloon with the string cut. Strong hands grasp him by the shoulders, a forehead pressed against his own, and when all the air is gone from his chest and his incoherent laughter turns to a shaky gasp for breath he can feel a thumb tracing across his face, fingers curling around the back of his neck. 

“Woah, woah, hey, Rex.” He hears the shushing in his ear, low and gentle. “It’s okay, c’mon. You’re okay.” 

Peter reaches out, blindly, and his fingertips find the divot of Juno’s collarbone, the rough rasp of dark hair curling over his chest and the soft knit of his shirt. If he pressed his palm flat just a little lower, he might feel his heartbeat, steady and solid and real. “Peter,” he gasps. “Call me Peter, please.” 

“Okay,” Juno says, resonant and just hushed enough to make Peter feel a kick of heat in his belly. “Whatever you want,” he agrees. “Peter.” 

It feels more like a name in his mouth than almost any other time Peter’s heard it, like Juno’s voice gives it all the substance and weight it was missing, makes it something true and real. “Whatever I want?” he echoes back, his other hand tracing idly over Juno’s arm. 

Juno’s face pulls away from his, just far enough to let his eye search Peter’s face, catch the intent of his question. A familiar, pretty blush darkens his skin, and his lips part a little in surprise, and then wider, with a bold flicker of a smile. “Yeah,” he challenges. “Yeah, I think so.” 

Peter kisses him because in that moment he can’t reasonably imagine doing anything else, and because kissing Juno feels safer and welcomer than being alone with the vast emptiness of his broken memory another second, and because Juno is kissing him back just as fiercely, lips like silk and hands sure and steady where they clasp at the sides of his face. 

He pulls away to catch his breath, but keeps hold of Juno, fingers wound tight in the fabric of his shirt. “I’ve had a long day,” he says, pointedly, “Help me take my mind off it, won’t you, Juno?” 

Juno’s eye drifts to his kiss-bruised lips, and goes a little hazy. “You got it,” he agrees. “I can do that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EYES EMOJI
> 
> there was a heatwave this week that kept me from writing so i'm only JUST now finishing the buffer chapter i wanted to have done but it HAS been a week and frankly i like the way shit pops off in this chapter


	6. moving on up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A dream, a rumor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: some vague references in passing to drug abuse, and canon-typical alcohol use

There’s a soft strain of music echoing from the courtyard. 

Peter stops to listen more clearly, and follows the sound down a hallway clad in white marble. The quality of the music stays soft and distant all the way, muffled through the walls. He doesn’t know which direction the courtyard is from here, only that the music is coming from the courtyard, because the there are always musicians in the courtyard. 

Moving slow and dreamlike, he ducks behind a hanging curtain and finds a window seat hidden there, following a sense memory rather than a conscious action. If he were to crack the window, just a little, the music would be clearer, perhaps he might even be able to make out the words. 

He pushes, but the window is jammed shut. 

“I don’t know where I am,” he says, as the impulse strikes him, not intending to speak to anyone at all but turning to find himself already engaged in a conversation. 

“Don’t be silly, child.” The woman in the pastel robes, with her liver-spotted hands and upturned nose, peers down at him like she can’t quite decide how to address him. “This is your home, isn’t it?” 

Her face wavers strangely when he focuses on it too long, sometimes flat like a grainy photograph and sometimes a little more substantial than that. Slightly unfocused, pale eyes behind round, thick spectacles. Reading glasses, Peter remembers. She never wore them for meetings, complained that they made her look old. The architects left them off when they erected that statue of her, in the square below. 

He saw her name in the dossier. Chancellor Aveline Rossignol. Always Madame Rossignol to him. No mention of her reading glasses there, either, that he can recall. A very strange oversight. 

“Is it?” 

Madame wrings her hands. “Well yes, of course it is! A-are you quite certain you’re feeling alright? I told your father it would lead to trouble, allowing you to wander around like some shiftless kitchen boy.” 

He pushes at the window again. “I’m fine,” he dismisses. On the other side of the glass, where the buildings recede into the distance, there’s a cloud bank rising, obscuring the architecture in a pearly fog. The window doesn’t budge, and Peter digs through his pockets for a lockpick. 

“And where _is_ that tutor of yours?” Madame blusters. “I ought to have words with him, really, the nonsense he puts in your head.” 

“It’s not nonsense,” he says, defensively, and digs at the latch with the little curved metal tool. “And I’m not wandering, I just…wanted to hear the music in the square.” 

The lockpick catches with a click, and the latch finally gives way, and Peter knows he’s had this argument half a dozen times just as surely as he knows he has no idea what she’s talking about. Madame watches him tuck away the lockpick disapprovingly. “Well. It was your father’s decision, bringing that man and his new-age teaching philosophies here, not mine. Just mind you don’t lose sight of where you belong, hm? A p̶̛̖ŗ̸̨̯̱̎̈͂į̵̙̻̯̲̅ń̸̽̐̕͜ċ̶̼͈̹̺̽̑ȩ̸͕͖̝͍͍̈́̉̒̉̍̃ has his place.” 

Halfway through the motion of pushing the window open, Peter stops. The cloudbank is rising fast, almost like the city itself is sinking down through the white mist to meet it. If he focuses, he can feel the low lurch in his gut, picturing the long descent. “I can’t--”

“You mark my words, child,” Madame Rossignol continues, grasping at the curtain with one liver-spotted hand, and Peter turns to see her eyes distant behind the frames of her glasses. “It’s men like M̶̛̲̗â̸̤̟̅g̴̭̋͋ ̸̪͔̉R̶̳̂a̶̡̞̐n̴̬̋͜ş̷͕͒̆ò̷̠̭͘m̸̥̀̕ who will be the death of us all, one day.” 

“That’s not true,” he argues, and the walls aren’t marble any longer, they’re corrugated steel, washed scarlet with a harsh, sourceless red glow. “That’s not true,” Peter repeats, and he’s breathless, heart pounding in his ears, head ringing. “ _I_ will.”

The ground drops out from beneath his feet.

He startles himself awake with a gasp, only prevented from jolting upright by the arms wrapped around him, the head pillowed against his shoulder. Startling, but only uncomfortably restrictive for as long as it takes him to remember that he should expect it. Juno Steel doesn’t stir, even with his momentary lapse, snoring faintly with his face pressed into Peter’s neck, quite unbothered. The berth is small, not designed to accommodate two bodies at once, but the way Juno clings in his sleep you wouldn’t know it. 

The faint glow of a passing moon refracts a beam of light through the porthole to play across the ceiling. Peter watches it pass in silence, and by the time his racing heart slows the last echoes of the dream slip through his fingers, and he forgets.

*

Juno shuffles uncomfortably in the passenger seat of the terrifyingly sentient getaway car, and adjusts the picture hat currently sliding off his head. Driving with the top down is one of those things that’s only fun in theory, like ketamine, or waterslides with loops. “Fifty creds says they throw us out ten minutes in,” he says, through gritted teeth. “What do you think? Because personally, I like my odds.” 

The big guy doesn’t even dignify him a sideways glance, pulling around the corner and down a lane lined with hedgerow trimmed into the shape of peacocks. Someone even went to the trouble of tucking little flower arrangements in where the plumes would be. Juno wrinkles his nose in disgust. He’s got a soft spot for bad art, but the architectural projects of the idle rich always put a bad taste in his mouth. 

“You have very little prior experience with undercover work, Juno,” Jet points out. “It would be unwise to expect you to undertake this mission alone. That is why I am here to escort you.” 

“Yeah, well, you could put a little more work into acting like a doting husband, that’s all I’m saying.” Buddy foisted one of her older wigs onto him, styled carefully over the side of his face to conceal his missing eye, and the long curls tickle the nape of his neck. 

“I am not at all attracted to you,” Jet informs him, succinctly, throwing the car into park. 

Juno crosses his arms. “I know, but--”

“I will do my utmost to behave like a devoted spouse,” Jet clarifies, “If you attempt to behave like a socialite. Does this sound amenable to you, Juno?” He crosses to the passenger side door and holds it open, one arm extended. Juno takes it, and tries not to wobble on his heels. 

“You got it,” he says. “Honey.” 

Solar travel agents call this place the Jewel of Io. Apparently, everybody who’s anybody has attended a garden party at the estate, which is funny, because Dahlia and Donovan Rose are about the furthest thing from Somebodies it’s possible to be. They didn’t even exist until about two hours ago. But a nice pantsuit and a string of pearls and a couple of well-forged documents are apparently all it takes to reassure the other partygoers that the name Rose sounds familiar, come to think of it, didn’t we meet at that auction last fall? 

It’s about the tackiest mansion Juno’s seen outside of a Kanagawa stream, and the walk from the carpark to the back lawns is long enough to make his feet start to blister in his wobbly shoes. He clings a little harder to the big guy’s arm to make up for it, and pastes on his best wide, empty grin, hoping it doesn’t look too much like a grimace. 

The surface of Jupiter glows huge and bold and a little out of focus through the artificial atmosphere, high above the garden hedges and follies. The other partygoers mill around like the scarlet skyline barely registers to them, all focused on small talk and petty rivalry and idle flirtation. Juno tries not to stare. 

“We do not have time to take in the scenery,” Jet says under his breath, and follows it, a little stiffly, with, “Dahlia.” 

“Sorry,” Juno grumbles, not very sorry at all. “Oh, look, they have tapas.” 

“ _Dahlia_ ”, Jet repeats, with a quirk of one eyebrow, and Juno settles for pocketing just one skewer. 

He pops an olive into his mouth. “Okay. You do the paperwork, I do the gossip, we meet back here when we’re done?” 

Jet offers him a terse nod. “Do not do anything foolish.” 

Juno tips his picture hat, and grins. “No promises.” He turns, and cuts off a waiter approaching the pair of them hopefully with a tray of drinks in hand, gesturing impetuously in a vague impersonation of every wealthy client he’s had over the years. “Thanks but no thanks, sorry, Donnie’s on the wagon and I’m trying to watch my girlish figure--” 

When he turns back, the big guy’s vanished into the house. Juno waits another second to be sure he’s in the clear, and nabs a few more hors d’oeuvres before making his way to the gardens. He’s got a rumor to spread. 

Peter probably could have managed to memorize the guest list in time, if he were in Juno’s shoes, but Juno himself is still a little shaky on the names and faces. He recognizes a few of the same Solar CEOs and plutocrats that milled around Hyperion City, and a few from less familiar star systems that he’s seen on streams or news reports. Venus has changed Presidents, thankfully, since he gave the last one a black eye working for Valles Vicky, so there’s nobody around likely to make Juno before he has a chance to start his whispering campaign. 

The first to approach him, though, is a woman he’s never seen in his life. Sharp manicured nails like claws, and a dress wrapped so tight around her Juno isn’t sure how she has the range of motion to move that fast without splitting a seam. She latches onto Juno’s elbow like they’re old friends, and slips a mimosa into his hand. “My _dear,_ , you simply _have_ to tell me where you found that gorgeous hat, I’m insanely jealous. Would you take a check?”

Juno splutters. “Do I...know you?” 

A wide, delighted grin splits her face, and she leans in close. “That’s my secret, Mr--”

“Rose,” Juno catches up, clutching tight at the stem of the flute in his hand. “Dahlia Rose. Why is it a secret?”

He wasn’t watching especially closely, but it would have been hard to miss the way she’s been flitting from group to group since the moment he arrived, like she’s meeting them all for the first time. But with jewels that extravagant at her throat and a smile so completely guileless and pristine, there’s no doubt she’s a regular at these kinds of garden parties. It’s an interesting contradiction, and one that sticks out. How can she be old money, but new on the scene? 

“Ooh,” she drawls, “That would be telling, Dahlia. Can I call you Dahlia? I think I will.” 

Juno looks her up and down again, and blows a curl out of his face. “Sure. I’m guessing the game is figuring out what to call you?” 

She makes a pleased, slightly squeaky guffaw of delight. “Oh, you are a card! Well, Dahlia, give it your best guess, won’t you? Ooh, nobody’s figured me out all afternoon, the anticipation is _stifling_ me!” 

All the people milling around this garden...they know her, he thinks. But they don’t know they know. So what changed? Juno squints at her hair, done up in a baroque stack of ringlets with a few trailing curls and a fringe of asymmetrical bangs. Not wearing a hat, which sets her apart from most of the people here. Like she wants to show it off. 

“You got a haircut,” he blurts, without thinking, half the mimosa splashing out of his glass and over his feet. “Which, uh, looks great, by the way!” 

The mysterious heiress beams, and claps her hands. “Isn’t it just? Perfect for my debut, darling, aren’t they just going to _die_ when they find out? Oh, I can’t believe you’ve coaxed the truth out of me like that, you wicked woman, you. Look at me, giving up all my secrets! Nova Zolotonva, dear, formerly Zolotov but that’s all behind us now. Congratulations on being the first to meet _the new me_!” She extends one sharp-nailed, ring-studded hand out like she expects Juno to drop a kiss on it. 

Juno swallows a grimace as he does, and sets his champagne flute down with a sigh. He’s found his angle. “That’s amazing. You know, Nova, you’re the second person to say that to me this week?” 

The broad white smile on the debutante’s face goes a little flat. “What?”

Juno puts on a worried face. He’s not winning any awards for his acting, but he’s seen more than enough soap opera streams to guess the kind of performance that will keep Zolotovna invested. “Well,” he whispers, conspiratorially, “I’m really not supposed to say--” 

Zolotovna goes white as a sheet. “Say what? What is it? What?” 

Juno shakes his head, leaning closer, biting at his lower lip. “No, I can’t tell anyone, I promised I’d keep his secret identity _safe_!”

One hand clasped dramatically to her breast, Zolotonva’s eyes widen. “A secret identity? Who? Oh, Dahlia, you _have_ to tell me, please, my heart can’t take it--” 

“Well--” Juno ducks lower, glancing side to side as if they’re being watched. “I guess you did tell me _your_ big secret, huh? Wouldn’t be fair to keep this from you now.” 

“That’s right,” Zolotovna agrees, clutching tight enough at Juno’s hand that he might have to check with Vespa for injuries, later. “Tell me, Dahlia, _tell_ me!” 

Juno swallows down a smirk. “Promise you won’t tell anyone?”

“Not a soul,” she swears. 

“I met a man last night in Cassini,” Juno feeds her. Hook, line. “And do you know what he told me? He said he was the long lost prince of Brahma. Peter Nureyev III, in the flesh, right there by the magma waterfalls.” 

Zolotovna’s eyes go distant. “I always wanted to marry a prince,” she says, more than half to herself. “Was he handsome?” 

Sinker. Juno looks away, and determinedly does not think of the nameless thief’s hands tangled in his hair, gasping Juno’s name into the darkness. Zolotovna’s the one falling for a con, not Juno. Juno’s just...blowing off some steam. “Very.”

“Oh, Dahlia, you _better_ introduce us--”

“Love to,” Juno interrupts. “Small problem, though, is he can’t _prove_ he’s the real prince unless he can get to Brahma. He’s on his way there now.”

“My word…” Zolotonva looks a little teary-eyed, fanning at her face with one hand. “Now that _is_ a fascinating story, Dahlia Rose.” 

“Yeah, I thought so too,” Juno says, and this time he really can’t resist the grin that flickers across his face. He dusts himself off, and adjusts his hat again. “Remember, secret stays between us, right?” 

“Oh, of course, of course,” Zolotonva agrees. From the look on her face, the news will be all over the Solar system by tomorrow morning. With a little luck, the rumor will reach the former Outer Rim just before the Carte Blanche does. “Cross my heart and hope to die, honey.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fgjhklfg i just. i love nova. i love alexander muñoz' good work and hope to hear them again! i also just made myself enamored with the fiction of dahlia rose just having exactly as many interchangeable spouses as he needs for any given job


	7. chassé turn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A dance, a deadline, a dalliance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: i did say the rating would probably go up when i started but to clarify the whole second section of this chapter has that explicit sexual content...oh YOU know

Peter stands a little awkwardly in the middle of the cargo bay, looking skittish and out of his depth. “I hardly think all of this fanfare is necessary, Captain Aurinko.” 

He’s probably right that the audience is a little excessive. At least Rita is here for the sheer entertainment value, Jet was already elbows-deep under the hood of one of the cars before anyone else arrived, Vespa’s here because Buddy is, and Juno, uh. Didn’t have anywhere better to go. 

“We’re getting you an invitation to a ball, darling,” she says, with a wry smile. “I’m afraid you will need to learn to dance.” 

Rita’s fussing happily with one of the music players from the lighthouse--Juno’s not sure who snuck the thing on board, or he would have pitched it out a porthole weeks ago. After a few tries, the first lilting notes of a waltz start up. 

Buddy hums, and looks Peter up and down, hand on her hip. “We’ll have to show you how to bow some other time, I think, but that would be the first step.” She pulls her skirts aside in an elegant curtsy that looks like something out of a stream, showing a glimpse of the pair of knives tucked in her boot and the blaster strapped to her thigh. If Juno tried to repeat the motion he’d trip over his own feet, even without the arsenal attached, but she makes it looks easy. 

Behind Buddy, he can see Rita mime along with the motion, and suppresses a cheeky grin. “Hey, Rita,” he whispers, under his breath, and tries to bow back. Rita snorts. 

“That,” Buddy remarks, lightly, “Is exactly what you shouldn’t do, Pete, if you want to pass for a prince.” 

Juno throws her an impudent salute, and takes Rita’s hand, spinning his secretary around in an exaggerated twirl and laughing when she protests, “Mistah _Steel_!” One of her heels comes down squarely on his foot instead of the floor, and Juno lets her go with a muffled, “Ow!”

“If you’re quite done wasting my time, Juno--” Buddy starts, and stops when Peter sweeps into a low bow of his own, feet aligned like a dancer and arm held at a slightly artificial angle. Juno thinks about that old portrait of Prince Nureyev, dressed up in his stiff formal uniform, balancing a crown on a head too young for the weight. “Well. Perhaps we won’t need the extra lesson after all. You are full of surprises, darling. Where did you pick that up?” 

Peter straightens out of his bow with a slightly nonplussed look on his face, and clears his throat. “I’m a quick study,” he says, in that familiar flat affect that Juno’s learning to recognize means he doesn’t know, and doesn’t want to admit it. 

“Hm.” Doesn’t get by Buddy, either, by the look on her face. “Let’s hope you’re quick on your feet to boot.” 

Juno leans against the hoverbike propped in the corner, and then shifts to lean against the wall when Jet clears his throat, pointedly. Rita hums along with the waltz while Buddy walks the other thief through the footwork, and Vespa watches from where she’s perched on a pile of crates, idly flipping a butterfly knife. It’s cozy, weirdly, sitting around the cargo bay watching the show. Reminds him of another time and place, a near-empty studio in the dead of night, Benten goading him until he gave in and shuffled his way gracelessly through a box step. 

Gracelessness isn’t Peter’s problem. He’s plenty graceful, stepping lightly and leading Buddy in smooth circles across the floor. Perfectly, effortlessly poised, not a toe out of line. But there’s something off about it, and Juno stares, trying to piece together what the problem is until Buddy throws out a, “Chin up, Pete! Smile,” and he bares all his teeth in a sharp white grin that makes Juno’s stomach lurch. 

He moves the same way he did when he knocked Juno off his feet and held a dagger to his throat. Dances like a knife fight, so when he steps back, light on his feet, he doesn’t look regal. He looks ready to pounce.

Buddy drops her arms matter-of-factly only a moment later, and sighs. “Alright, darling, change of plans. Juno?”

Juno starts, eye flickering from Peter’s face to hers. “Uh, yeah?”

“Tag in, won’t you? Best foot forward this time, if you don’t mind. I need an outside perspective.” 

“I--” Juno stands, swallows, steps forward. Peter’s looking at him with slightly guarded surprise, half in and half out of the posture he puts on while playing at royalty. “Right. Sure.” 

He doesn’t bother with another attempt at a curtsy, just holds his breath and rests one hand on Peter’s shoulder and the other against his upturned palm. Fixes his eye somewhere a little to the left of his lean, soft face, and does his level best to float across the floor. It comes a little faster and easier than it probably should. 

The lilting waltz keeps them in good time, stepping tentatively and then settling into the rhythm. Buddy instructs and Peter leads Juno through a turn, and when he feels like he has his breath back Juno looks him in the face for the first time. “I didn’t know you danced,” Peter says, quietly. 

“It’s, uh, been a long time,” Juno tells him. “I’m not, like, an _expert_ or anything--”

“Only a lady of many talents,” Peter finishes, with a smile that’s less sharp than before. More like himself than the man he’s been pretending to be. 

Juno huffs out a laugh. “You’re picking it up faster than I did,” he argues. “My teacher always had to tell me to stop scowling.” It’s easier than it used to be to talk about him, like a little of that scar tissue knotted around his heart has finally started to smooth out. Juno turns out, and in again. “ _Dancing’s supposed to be fun, Super-Steel, relax_ ,” he mimics, in an impression that comes back to him as easy as riding a hovercycle. 

Peter’s smile doesn’t diminish, but it wanes even softer. His fingers wind with Juno’s before leading him in another twirl. “A very wise man. I have to say I’m finding the experience very enjoyable, myself.”

“I’m, uh.” Juno falters, clears his throat, trying to find his feet again. “Getting a little dizzy, actually.” 

Peter doesn’t let go his hand, or move his other palm from the small of Juno’s back, but he slows, accommodating. “Then I suppose we ought to stop spinning.”

He offers it up like a suggestion, his voice a little distant and his eyes too keen to linger on Juno’s lips for what Juno has just remembered is a very public space. About as close to an arena as it’s possible to get, on a cargo ship this size. “We already stopped,” Juno points out, though he could swear he’s still floating somewhere out in the stratosphere. Some technical glitch with the artificial gravity, if he had to bet.

Peter blinks, and steps away, belatedly. “Ah,” he says. “So we have.” 

The waltz from the music player ends with a slightly abrupt squeal, and Juno looks back to see Rita busily popping open a panel on the side, apparently with some rewiring scheme in mind. Buddy steps into his field of view a moment later, offering a polite golf clap.

“Alright,” she says, a little more aloof than Juno likes. “I think we’ve all cut enough rugs for one day. Good work, Pete, Juno. Take a rest, won’t you, you’ve earned it.” 

“Thank you, Captain.” Peter offers another grin to Juno over his shoulder as he makes his departure, less gentle and more come-hither. More familiar territory. Juno watches him go with a slightly sheepish air, but before he can decide whether to follow Buddy beckons him over with decisive tilt of her chin. 

“I think I fancy a walk,” she says, coolly, offers her arm. “Join me, won’t you?” 

Juno doesn’t resist when she loops her arm with his, just frowns. “Pretty small ship, Buddy, you can make it from one end to the other in three minutes, tops.” 

Buddy leads him away from the others, a little more pointedly, her boots clacking against the plate-steel floor. “Yes, well, be that as it may, Juno, I want you--” she tugs him out into the hallway, “--to take a _walk_ with me, now, _please_.” 

His feet finally touch down again mid-journey, the last of the strange floaty dizziness fading as the exercise clears his head, but Buddy keeps dragging him along until they reach a remote corner, somewhere at the far end of the ship. Her posture isn’t particularly threatening, and beneath her aloof exterior he catches more flashes of worry than anger, but she doesn’t let him go either. Just stops, apparently satisfied with their destination, and turns a long, tight-lipped look on Juno’s face. 

“You’re sleeping with him,” she remarks, after a moment, and Juno flinches back. 

“That’s. You--I can’t even _begin_ to tell you how much that’s none of your business,” he splutters. 

Buddy sighs, and lets him go. “If you want to keep your business strictly private, you might start by recognizing how thin the walls are around here, dear.” 

Juno groans. “Hey--”

“But that’s beside the point. You are well within your rights to spend your nights on board my ship in whatever way you please, and Peter is too, provided of course that he doesn’t pick any more of my locks.”

Red-faced, Juno folds his arms over his chest. “Then I don’t see what the big damn issue is, _Captain_.” 

“I am not speaking to you as a Captain,” Buddy says, sharply, tapping her toe against the floor. Her face softens, a little. “I’m speaking to you as a friend, Juno. This mission we’re on is...time sensitive.” 

She says it like the words are supposed to have some clear, implicit meaning to Juno, but he can’t make it out. He was a little distracted today, sure, but he can make it up. He can pull his weight. “Yeah, I know,” he says. “I’m doing all my work and going to all the meetings, same as everyone else. You’ve been pretty goddamn clear about the deadline.” 

“Not quite clear enough, I think.” Buddy says, half under her breath, sounding a little regretful. “We’re only two weeks out from Brahma and the Chancellor’s Ball, dear. Things are getting quite down to the wire.” 

Juno scowls. His pride’s been through a lot, it can take a beating, but this feels unwarranted. He’s new, but he’s not a complete idiot, and honestly he’d assumed Buddy had at least a little more faith in him. “I’ll be ready for the fucking heist, Buddy,” he insists, prickly and little stung. 

“It isn’t the _job_ I’m worried about, darling.” She says it firmly enough to stun him into silence again, stops to adjust the cuffs of her blouse. “Do you know where we go when we leave Brahma?” 

If she’s mentioned it, Juno can’t remember. He watches her in glum silence. 

“Proxima Centauri, Juno,” she continues. “I’ve arranged a meeting with a few dignitaries on a satellite station nearby. It’s my hope that we’ll be able to get more information from them that might lead us to the Curemother Prime, or the tools we need to find it. Our work does not end on Brahma. But our time with our nameless friend _does_.”

Something behind Juno’s ribs rebels violently at the thought, and he lurches upright. “You’re _leaving_ him there?” 

“He requested it,” Buddy says, firmly. “It would jeopardize our mission too much to return to the ball to retrieve him after we’ve escaped the server farm, and the attempt might very well endanger him more than it helps. And we aren’t leaving the man high and dry, you know. Whatever reward the Chancellor offers for the Prince’s safe return will be all his to keep, and Jet agreed to give up one of the cars in case he needs to make a hasty getaway of his own.” 

The words wash over Juno but refuse to stick, buzzing through his head like a sandstorm siren. He folds back against the wall, glancing away from Buddy’s face and tracing over the patterns in the carpet at his feet until his eye loses the thread, again and again. “Oh.” 

“He has his own mission, darling,” she adds, softer. “I could hardly ask him to abandon it for our sake.” 

Juno swallows. “Yeah,” he concedes, and tries to force that twisting pain behind his ribs to settle. It’s not like he expected this _thing_ with Peter to last, to go anywhere further than a casual fling. But two weeks...two weeks goes by fast. 

“Don’t get your heart broken, darling,” Buddy says, matter-of-factly. “That’s all I meant.”

Juno grins, wryly, and brushes it off. “My heart’s fine,” he promises. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.” 

*

“Oh, Juno,” Peter sighs, into the sliver of space between their faces. Juno’s impatient, eager and pliant and giving. Juno’s lovely like this, Peter’s lips on his throat as he pins him back against the bedframe, pushing his hips up into the fingers sliding against his cock. Peter tells him as much with the points of his teeth grazing his earlobe, just to watch him shiver. “Look at you. Pretty thing.”

“Fuck,” Juno gasps, too sudden and too loud for the confined space, and Peter grins. He likes Juno caught unawares. Likes him in disarray, too, didn’t give him half a moment to undress before pulling him in for a slow, heated kiss, crawling into his lap and throwing off the flimsy silk robe he’d wrapped himself in to wait. Juno’s slacks are pulled down to his thighs, his shirt half unbuttoned, his cock already hard and straining against his boxers. Shoes still on his feet, probably scuffing the sheets horribly, but the debauched picture he presents more than makes up for the minor inconvenience.

Peter travels light. He owns exactly as much as he can carry, moment to moment, stays exactly as long as he can in each bed before the next ship leaves. To indulge in Juno’s company so freely for so long is an extravagance he has rarely enjoyed. Peter thinks it’s possible he’s never _enjoyed_ any man’s company quite so thoroughly as Juno’s. 

He sits back on his heels, just shy of granting a little teasing friction where he’s perched in Juno’s lap, thighs wrapped around his waist, and wets his kiss-bitten lips with a flick of his tongue. “Well, now. How do you want me, hm?” 

Juno groans, lets his head fall back until it collides with the wall. “Sorta seemed like you were taking the lead here,” he says, raw and a little petulant. Peter wants to make him scream. 

“Oh, I have a few ideas,” he sighs, lets one hand slide down his belly to tease at the wetness between his legs, the hard jut of his dick. He’s prepared, for this game. Juno kept him waiting too long. 

Juno’s eye tracks hungrily down the path his fingers follow, and he watches Peter slick his fingers, slide them over himself with a slow delightful friction. It’s a lovely thought, making him watch longer, keeping his hands to himself while Peter fucks himself in his lap. A lovely thought, except that Peter has other plans in mind. 

“You’ve been so good to me, dear,” he says, lilting, voice catching a little as he rubs a little faster. “Letting me come on your tongue, on your cock, on those wonderful fingers of yours.” Juno swallows, and Peter grins wider. “It’s the least I can do to return the favor.”

He slides backwards, off Juno’s lap, tugging at his boxers and his slacks to pull them off as he goes. Juno curls his fists into the sheets. “Shit,” he says, voice breaking, and then, “Holy shit, goddamn--” when Peter sinks between his legs, still grinning. He slides his palms along the soft skin of Juno’s thighs, spreads his knees and stops there, looking up at him and quirking a brow in challenge. 

“Well, Juno?” He keeps his voice low. “Are you amenable?” 

All the air rushes out of Juno in a trembling sigh, and his throat bobs as he swallows. “Please, fuck, yes--”

Peter squeezes at his ass, plants a kiss on his inner thigh and then bites at one cheek, eliciting a slightly breathless laugh from Juno. His thumb traces a little further, running along the seam of his hole, slipping almost inside before spreading him open to trace the same path with his tongue. He hears another soft exhalation from Juno, glances up and sees him watching with a heated intensity that burns in his gut like the fire of a small sun. 

It’s nothing to the sounds he makes as Peter licks him loose enough to press his tongue inside, abrupt moans and shallow, needy gasps, but that singular look on his face lingers in his mind’s eye, nonetheless. Like Peter has him body and soul. It sends a surge of some emotion right through him that Peter can’t name, or perhaps doesn’t want to name right this minute, eating Juno Steel out until he’s writhing against the sheets, gasping the closest thing Peter has to a name. 

“Feels so fucking good, don’t stop, Peter, goddamn,” he moans, as if Peter had any intention of doing any such thing. Fingers card through his hair, gentle at first and then tugging when Peter fucks him deeper with his tongue. “Oh sh--yes, yes, fuck, like _that_.” Peter’s not often one for having his hair pulled, but for Juno he feels up to making an exception. 

He can feel Juno’s thigh trembling where it’s thrown over Peter’s shoulder, glances up and sees his face turned sideways to press into the pillow, the very picture of decadence. Peter hums in delight, reaches down almost as an afterthought and finds he’s slick nearly to dripping down his own thighs, rubs two fingers over his dick and feels a groan, loud and wanton, leave his lips almost without warning. 

“Goddamn,” Juno says again, ragged, and, “Peter--” 

“Are you close?” he asks, one finger and then two slipping readily inside, curling and pressing against the spot that makes him shiver and quake, heel of his hand grinding against his dick. 

“I--yeah,” Juno pants. “Fuck. Yeah, I’m close.” 

“Let me hear you come, Juno,” he asks, hopes he retains enough dignity not to sound like he’s begging, and slides his tongue against Juno’s hole with renewed fervor, fucking himself on his fingers and pressing Juno back into the mattress, giving him all that he can. 

Juno cries out, and tugs at Peter’s hair again, and slides his other hand down his stomach to grasp at his cock, his lips parted in an inviting O. Peter watches his spine arch, sees him spill into his hand with a short, desperate moan. Clutches at his hip to hold him in place until the overstimulation makes his gasps turn sharper, and lets him go, leaving him boneless and trembling and shining with sweat. 

It’s scarcely a moment before Peter follows, tumbling over the edge with his cheek pressed against Juno’s thigh, Juno’s taste on his tongue. Moaning his name as he comes, he thinks, or _yes_ , or simply _oh, oh, oh_ , but whatever the word on his lips the pleasure overtakes him like a breaking wave, leaves him breathless and wrung out in its wake. 

Peter catches his breath, and looks Juno in the face, and catches another glimpse of the same singular expression he’d noticed before, that gaze focused on him with a strange, intense openness. Keen and soft at the same time, and he can’t bring himself to look away. 

“Holy shit.” Juno’s eye drifts shut, and his head tilts back against the pillow. Releases Peter from the strange spell of his gaze.

He sprawls on his side with his chin propped against one hand, and sighs. “Do you know, Juno, I have the strangest feeling--” he begins, and isn’t sure how he means to finish the sentence. Then he is, all at once, deadly sure with an absolute certainty that fills the pit of his stomach with a slow, sinking dread. Like a magic-eye puzzle turned at a precise angle, the truth looms clear in his vision, and he feels a fool for failing to recognize what had been in plainly front of him all along. “Ah.” 

Peter’s never fallen in love before, precisely, but he’s picked a very inconvenient time to start. 

Juno’s brow furrows. “What?”

Peter folds the feeling up. Files it away. The feeling does not go quietly. “Nothing of import,” he brushes off. “Forget I said it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god i just. i keep accidentally picking the concepts that force me to make juno and peter dance together and i really don't intend to stop!! its a good trope
> 
> also feel free to thank me we all keep writing about what a nice ass juno has but nobody will ever let it get EATEN. its what the lady deserves


	8. ships that pass in the night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A last late night on the Carte Blanche.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: none that i can think of for this chapter!

_“--can’t believe you would hide this from me, Melissa, all these years I thought you were my friend!”_

_“I am your friend! That wasn’t a lie, I swear. What we had was real, Gayle, and that doesn’t change just because I’m also secretly a dinosaur! ”_

Juno extricates himself from the pile of blankets and pillows as carefully as he can, and leaves the stream running. Rita’s snoring away, her silk bonnet slightly askew and one hand still buried in a bag of salmon crisps, but the last time Juno turned the stream off she complained, since apparently her dreams usually follow the same basic plot structure as _Velociraptor Housewives of Miami_ and the interruption kept her from finding out how the last season ended. 

Stream nights are nice, in the way that huddling under a blanket in a small, dark room with the flickering light of a plasma screen lulling him to sleep, head resting on someone else’s shoulder is like having a little piece of home. Different company than he grew up with, but familiar and comfortable and safe in all the same ways. 

_”I just don’t know how I can trust you again, Melissa. I mean, I value our friendship a lot, but you bit off my arm--”_

He shuffles out of the berth with a muffled yawn, making a detour down the hall toward the bathroom. 2 AM ship time is the only free window he’s found so far to brush his teeth without Vespa threatening to pick the lock or make Jet break the door down. 

Juno’s peripheral vision has seen better days. He catches the reflection angled in the mirror on the cabinet door before he thinks to check his blind side and glance across the hall to the family room. Just a dark shape out of place against the backdrop of the observation window. 

He recognizes the figure too fast to really startle, but his heart lodges in his throat for a split second anyway. 

Juno turns, tries to school his face into any expression but the idiotic smitten grin that tricks its way onto his lips. Fumbles desperately for something witty to say, and comes up with, “Couldn’t sleep?” 

Well. Smartass one-liners can’t all be winners. 

Peter’s face turns back toward Juno, showing the sharp plane of his nose in profile, the dark hair falling over his shoulders. Starlight makes him glow around the edges, silhouetted against the porthole where he stands, aloof and a little eerie. Goddamn beautiful, though. “I suppose not,” he answers, softly. 

A politer lady than Juno would ask if he'd mind the company, but Juno's more used to asking forgiveness than permission. When another moment lapses, and Peter doesn't move to speak again, he takes the risk, insinuating himself into one corner of the couch. "Cool," he offers, testing the waters. "Me neither." 

Peter's eyes flicker back to the window, either because Juno's unsubtle prodding doesn't faze him or because it didn't register either way. His face is cold as starlight, and nearly as distant. He doesn’t tell Juno to fuck off, anyway, so he gets comfortable. 

That brings Juno to the end of his brilliant strategy for prompting a conversation, and he's forced to sit in silence, scowling like furrowing his brow hard enough at Peter's back will lead him to some flash of understanding, and then eventually losing track of the attempt as his attention shifts from trying to read Peter's mind through sheer force of will to watching the subtle motion of his shoulders, shifting with each breath. The way his sharp teeth peek past his lips. It would be the easiest thing in the world, to sit and watch him in the dark for hours. 

Or, alternatively, in a last-ditch attempt to stave off the feelings he's been dancing around for weeks now, he could make an ass of himself instead. 

"Stars are looking, uh, nice tonight," he ventures, craning forward to peer over Peter's shoulder at the sparkling constellations and sprawling nebulae, the bright spots of planets and their moons between. "Very, um. Shiny." 

"You probably think me a naive fool," Peter says, abruptly, still soft like he's trying not to jostle something fragile and full of spiderweb fractures. 

Juno's brow furrows even deeper, and he leans forward in his seat. "What? No, why the hell would I think that?" 

"Well, I am," Peter says, tight and deprecating, not louder but more precise, and his shoulders curl in tighter, shrinking into himself. "I suppose everyone has a flaw." 

Juno watches him, jaw set. "Yeah? Well, pot, kettle. Look at me. No shortage of flaws here, take your goddamn pick, there's plenty to go around. Lay it on me." 

It gets a laugh. Only a little one, more a quiet exhale than anything, and a thin smile turned his way, over Peter's shoulder. Juno leans towards both like a plant straining for sunlight. 

Peter's nimble fingers, pickpocket's fingers, reaching up to play with the collar of his shirt, resting at the hollow of his throat. Peter's mouth set in a small, determined line. "What do you think?" His face sharpens, set on Juno with a familiar desperation. "Truly, Juno. Will I find them?" 

Juno blinks. "Find who?" 

"My--" Peter's voice breaks a little over the word, "My _family_ , I suppose." He looks, for a moment, in awe of the word, and then sets his jaw. "I happen to value your professional opinion rather highly, Detective. What do you expect the odds are? Be honest with me."

"I--"

"A child who ends up alone and bloodied by a roadside on a planet that isn't his," Peter continues. "Do you suppose he has a home to return to, after all? Or might he have been _alone_ in the first place for a reason, hm?" 

Juno drops his gaze to the floor, and bites his tongue. Hears a few nervous footfalls as Peter breaks away from the porthole to pace across the deck. The thought had crossed his mind. 

"It would be wise to prepare for any eventuality, don't you think?" he says, in a short, clipped tone that's probably aiming for clinical, trying and failing to keep the emotion in his voice simmering below the surface. "To consider the possibility that...anyone who might have missed me was dead before I ever left, or passed quietly in the interim, before I had a chance to find them again. Or that--that I haven't been missed at all. Perhaps I wasn't _wanted_ , or I was some sort of runaway or refugee or...or...well. I'm sure you could speculate better than I could, hm, you've the greater experience in solving mysteries between us. I haven't even managed one, and I've had twenty years to work at it. I'm afraid I've let the case grow quite cold." 

Juno sits, feeling paralyzed by the weight of the question, flinching in discomfort when Peter lets out a strained mockery of a laugh. "Fuck, Peter," he exhales, not meeting his eyes. 

"I could survive it," he says, in a small, hard voice. "If they're gone. If they hated me. I could survive that, I hope." When Juno looks up, he's clinging to the back of the sofa, face drawn and a little bloodless. "It's worse not to know. It's worse to be afraid I never will." 

It's hard to know what to say. Juno had a family and barely survived the experience. Juno had a home and gave it up because trying to fix it was killing him, too. Doesn't know who the hell he'd be, if he didn't have those things, if he didn't even have a name to call to mind _mothers_ and _protectors_ and a past to define the exact boundaries of the hole he's been falling in and crawling out of over and over again all his life. But a little of the yearning feels familiar anyway, to the part of him that grew up on the chainmail hero searching for a way home. Some ancient diaspora longing that the deepest part of him remembers like it’s written into his bones. "Yeah," he says anyway, knowing how insufficient the word is. 

Peter's quiet. Then, he straightens, slowly, a bright flicker in his face. "Do you know, I used to tell myself little stories about where I might have come from. Just to pass the time." 

One corner of Juno’s mouth quirks up in a tiny smile. “You ever imagine being a long-lost prince?” 

He rolls his eyes. “Oh, not you, too,” he sighs, flanking the couch to throw himself down beside Juno. “There’s such a thing as taking a con too far, you know.” Their shoulders brush as the sofa dips beneath the combined weight. 

Juno raises an eyebrow. “Thought you wanted to consider every possibility,” he says, only half teasing. 

“I--” Peter falters, for a moment, his gaze flickering away to the corners of the room, then searching Juno’s face, lips pursed in consideration. “Well. I suppose I do have a little more to go on than pure intuition.” 

Both Juno’s eyebrows raise at that. Peter ducks his head, reaches to brush aside the dark hair at the nape of his neck and make a motion that Juno recognizes as fiddling with the clasp of a necklace, an instant before the fine links of the chain catch the low light. He draws it out from beneath his collar with an almost ritual observance, the same way Juno’s seen curators handle priceless diamonds. 

Hanging from the end of the chain is a pendant in plain, unstained wood, rough in some places but worn to smoothness where fingers must have brushed against it a thousand times over the years. Peter’s fingers curl around it protectively, but Juno can make out the curve of a wing. 

“I had it with me,” Peter says. “When I was found. The only thing I had with me, as it happens.” 

A whole history in a little wooden charm. Juno frowns at it. “Some kind of bird?” 

Peter scoffs, distractedly, his thumb tracing over the wing in a familiar caress. “An angel.” 

“Right.” If Juno turns his head just right, he can make out a featureless face, something that might be a hand or a foot. There’s intricate detail in the carved surface, but imperfection too, a homespun roughness in the form. No master craftsperson involved, if Juno’s remaining eye can be trusted to appraise the damn thing. It looks like the kind of gift someone makes for a kid when they can’t afford anything else. 

“It’s a good luck charm,” Peter says, his voice gone a little softer. “To keep me safe. I think--my father,” he continues, dropping nearly to a whisper. “I think I had a father. I think he gave it to me. That sounds right, don’t you think?” 

His eyes shine brighter than the stars blinking down on them as he turns the pendant over in his hand, lost in the thought. Juno doesn’t speak. All the words are dried up on his tongue. 

Peter shakes his head, and the wooden angel disappears with a quick sleight of hand. “It’s what I like to imagine, anyway. Perhaps I only stole it.” 

Half a damn clue. Less than that, even, and the whole galaxy to pick through with a fine-tooth comb and the kind of brutal, stubborn hope that Juno’s only heard of in fairy tales and kid’s cartoons. Buddy probably had a point, coming after Juno the other week, accusing him of setting himself up to get his heart shattered to pieces. He’s so goddamn _gone_ for Peter that for a split second he can’t even _breathe_. 

“You’ll find them.” Juno’s mouth basically just runs itself at this point, the rest of him does the work of running to catch up before it’s too late to do damage control. He feels his face get hot, and looks away before Peter’s eyes can find his again. “I mean, there’s always a chance, right? It’s pretty slim odds, sure, but if anyone could figure it out its...uh, you.” 

“I didn’t realize you had such faith in me, Juno.”

He sounds skeptical, and probably more teasing than anything, but Juno can’t stop himself from answering anyway, too earnest, “I’d be an idiot not to.” 

“Oh.” 

“Yeah.” Juno regains something close enough to composure to at least look him in the face, and clears his throat. “Seriously, I, um. I hope they’re good people. Would have to be, to deserve you.” 

A small, perplexed smile blooms on Peter’s face. “Thank you,” he says, more breath than sound. 

It would be dangerously easy to forget they’re only ships passing in the night, side by side for a moment in the darkness, close enough to reach out and touch, and soon enough they’ll drift apart again. The back of his hand brushes Juno’s, just for a moment, where they’re resting beside one another on the sofa. Juno’s not quite brave enough or stupid enough or _something_ enough to reach out and take it, even under cover of darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i give u...MORE fuckin pining
> 
> i wanted to keep up a schedule for this fic, but life said differently and it turns out i'm a full-time carer for a very sick family member instead! i don't regret spending my time that way, i love her very much, but it does mean updates are gonna continue to be a bit sporadic. hope you understand! it's a shit year out there. don't let that keep you from commenting tho, feedback on my fic is a welcome distraction

**Author's Note:**

> comments sustain me and help my brain to produce serotonin thank you for leaving them!! also i can be found @wastrelwoods on tumblr and twitter if you want more of this energy in your lives


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